Trump questions protections for whistleblower whose complaint prompted impeachment inquiry

Source: CNN

Lake Charles, Louisiana (CNN)President Donald Trump on Friday questioned why the US government is protecting the whistleblower whose complaint sparked House Democrats' impeachment inquiry.

"Why are we protecting a person that tells things that weren't true?" Trump said, even though many of the whistleblower's allegations have been corroborated by other evidence, including the transcript of the President's call with Ukraine. Trump's comment came as he once again claimed exoneration in his dealings with Ukraine, saying that he had done nothing wrong in pressing Ukraine's President to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden in Ukraine.

The President has previously said he wants to know the whistleblower's identity and has sought to discredit the anonymous individual as a partisan actor who misconstrued the details of his call with the Ukrainian leader, even as information released by the White House confirmed those details. Intelligence community whistleblowers have fewer protections than other federal employees, but are nonetheless legally protected, and Trump's acting director of national intelligence has said the whistleblower followed the correct protocol for reporting complaints.

Trump was speaking in Louisiana on the eve of a gubernatorial election, where he hoped to boost two Republican candidates. However, the President once again used the rally -- his second in two nights -- as a perch from which to fight back against the impeachment inquiry, which he called "unconstitutional."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/donald-trump-rally-lake-charles-louisiana/index.html