An Inspector General Just Nuked Trump's Go-to Attack on the Ukraine Whistleblower

WASHINGTON — President Trump and his army of far-right supporters wasted little time coalescing around a theory to try to discredit the intelligence officer who blew the whistle on Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election.

Promoted by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and other Republican lawmakers, this theory claimed the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the allegations in his complaint and so the allegations couldn’t be trusted. “It’s all hearsay,” Graham told CBS. “You can’t get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. The whistleblower didn’t hear the phone call.” The conservative website The Federalist went even further, claiming that the intelligence community had “secretly gutted” a requirement that whistleblowers “provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings.”

This supposed revelation — which typically caught fire in the self-contained information ecosystem of the right — “raises questions” about the intelligence community’s “behavior” related to the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower’s complaint, the Federalist claimed. In other words, what Trump and his allies want you to believe is that the Deep State somehow changed the rules to allow a whistleblower with credibility problems to come forward with grave allegations against the president.

The Federalist published its story on Friday. By Monday morning, this unverified theory had reached the Oval Office. “WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT? DRAIN THE SWAMP!” Trump tweeted.

But on Monday night, the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community released a rare public statement that debunked Trumpworld’s latest distraction and disinformation campaign.

Contrary to what Trump and McCarthy claimed, the inspector general said it had vetted the whistleblower’s allegations — most troubling of all, that Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election” — and found them to be both “urgent” and “credible.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-whistleblower-ukraine-disinformation-right-wing-mccarthy-graham-893214/