THE NATIONAL INTEREST 9:47 A.M.
Intelligence Inspector General to GOP: You Know Nothing of My Work
By Jonathan Chait

Last Thursday, Sean Davis of the conservative news site The Federalist broke an explosive revelation. The Intelligence Community had secretly changed a requirement in its whistle-blower statute to allow whistle-blowers to report secondhand allegations, whereas firsthand knowledge had been required before. This suspicious rule change allegedly allowed the whistle-blower to accuse President Trump of misconduct despite lacking firsthand knowledge of said conduct. The shocking exposure of yet another Deep State plot quickly became the foundation for Trump’s defenders as they fanned out across the media.

“The hearsay rule was changed just a short period of time before the complaint was filed,” claimed Senator Lindsey Graham. The whistle-blower “has no firsthand knowledge,” charged Congressman Jim Jordan on CNN, and when host Jake Tapper noted that firsthand knowledge is not required to file a complaint, Jordan shot back that this was only “because they changed the form. You used to.” Meanwhile, Trump demanded, in all caps, “WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT?”
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In a rational world, The Federalist would be publishing mortified corrections and Republicans would be engaged in soul-searching as to how such a simplistic fallacy had gained credence at the highest levels of their party. In a world where the conservative movement had at least some slight attachment to reality, the Federalistas would be quietly slinking away and changing the subject.

But in the actual world, they are continuing to insist they were right all along. The Federalist reporting team has not even developed its own alternative sources. Instead, they are plucking out sentences from the I.G. report that was written to correct their errors and claiming them as vindication.
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Inspector General Debunks Trump On Whistleblower
September 30, 2019

CNN reports:

On Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory suggesting the rules for whistleblowing had recently changed in order to accommodate the recent whistleblower complaint against him; specifically, so that someone with secondhand knowledge could now submit these complaints. In a statement issued late Monday afternoon, the inspector general of the intelligence community (ICIG) said that the form submitted by the whistleblower on August 12, 2019, was the same one the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018.

“Although the form requests information about whether the Complainant possesses first-hand knowledge about the matter about which he or she is lodging the complaint, there is no such requirement set forth in the statute.” “In fact,” the ICIG’s statement continues, “by law the Complainant…need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern. The ICIG cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law.”

The false claim originated at The Federalist and percolated across Trump World all weekend. It has not been retracted at this writing.