After a first whistleblower report revealed that President Trump was using the power of his office to pressure other countries into investigating his political opponents, Democrats in the House of Representatives began a formal impeachment inquiry.
Trump immediately responded by trying to discredit the anonymous whistleblower, an intelligence official who followed all the proper protocols by submitting his report through internal channels rather than taking his story to the press.
Despite the fact that all of the whistleblower's claims were confirmed by the transcript Trump himself released of the call, one of the President's repeated points of attack has been that the whistleblower wasn't personally present for many of the incidents he referenced in his report, having gotten second or third hand accounts of Trump's troubling actions.
Like a supervisor might when making a report on behalf of a subordinate who followed the proper chain of command and reported the improper activity to their supervisor.
Of course, that argument starts to break down when a second whistleblower who was present comes forward to submit information.
This second whistleblower seems to be coming forward to support the assertions of the first.
Trump responded in his usual, professional way:
by lashing out on Twitter, claiming the second whistleblower was being deployed by the "deep state" because the first had "got my phone conversation almost completely wrong."
Twitter wasn't buying Trump's take on reality.
Many felt Trump should be taking a good, hard look at his own lawyer before he attacked someone else's.
Some felt that Trump simply doesn't know how to process shame in the same way normal people do.
Trump's claims about the whistleblowers are ultimately irrelevant—he released evidence of his own wrongdoings to the general public.
Then doubled down live, on air, on the White House lawn.
The whistleblowers are both intelligence officials and the first is reportedly a Trump appointee, making his claims of partisan attacks particularly disingenuous.
In Trump's eyes, everyone has done wrong except for him.
It's also important to remember that other whistleblower complaints are still being held by the William Barr-led Department of Justice.
Who knows what else Trump has done or said with foreign heads of state in an effort to tamper with our national elections?
The book Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump, available here, provides a history of misconduct by the highest levels of government and those who risked everything to uphold the United States Constitution.
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