Controversy over whether or not to reveal the name of the man widely believed to be the whistleblower whose complaint prompted the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry ratcheted up even further on Wednesday after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out an article and quote including the whistleblower’s alleged name. While Democrats and the left-leaning media expressed outrage about Trump’s social media post, an impeachment inquiry transcript released by the office of Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff includes the very name Trump tweeted out.
As reported by RedState, Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee who is heading up the Democrats’ impeachment efforts, appears to have accidentally allowed the name widely identified as the whistleblower to appear in the transcript of the committee’s interview with top U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor.
In the transcript, the interviewer asks Taylor if the name of the man who has been widely reported as the whistleblower “ring[s] a bell?” Taylor responds, “It doesn’t.”
“So, to your knowledge, you never had any communications with somebody by that name?” Taylor is asked, to which he replies, “Correct.”
The failure to redact the name means one of two things, suggests Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson, either he’s not the whistleblower or the Democrats made a massive error.
The alleged identity of the whistleblower was first reported by RealClearInvestigations’ Paul Sperry, who describes his identity as “an open secret inside the Beltway.”
Sperry reported last week that the whistleblower is allegedly a 33-year-old “registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia ‘collusion’ investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.” The whistleblower reportedly “left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media” and “has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia,” Sperry reports, citing federal documents.
The alleged whistleblower “was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” a former NSC official told RealClearInvestigations.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out an article and a quote naming the alleged whistleblower. In response to blowback from the left-leaning media, the president’s son tweeted: “The entire media is #Triggered that I (a private citizen) tweeted out a story naming the alleged whistleblower. Are they going to pretend that his name hasn’t been in the public domain for weeks now? Numerous people & news outlets including Real Clear Politics already ID’d him.”
“PS: Maybe Real Clear Politics & others wouldn’t have been able to ID the alleged whistleblower if the NY Times didn’t out that he was a CIA official detailed to the WH?” Trump added. “The media is full of sh** with their faux outrage over me tweeting something already in the public domain!”
As The Daily Wire reported, the whistleblower’s attorney announced Sunday that his client is willing to answer Republicans’ questions, but only in written form. President Trump, who has provided some of the descriptions of the alleged whistleblower included in Sperry’s report but has not named him publicly, responded to the attorney’s offer with an unequivocal rejection. “The Whistleblower gave false information and dealt with corrupt politician [Adam] Schiff,” Trump tweeted Monday. “He must be brought forward to testify. Written answers not acceptable!”
Perception that the whistleblower is motivated by a partisan political agenda was further inflamed this week after tweets from 2017 by the whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Zaid, resurfaced in which Zaid celebrated that the “coup has started” in the federal government against Trump and his “impeachment will follow.”
Related: Whistleblower Lawyer In January 2017: ‘Coup Has Started,’ ‘Impeachment Will Follow’