Second whistleblower comes forward
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If it keeps on raining . . .
Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the whistleblower who sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and triggered an impeachment inquiry, tells ABC News that he is now representing a second whistleblower who has spoken with the inspector general.
Zaid tells ABC News’ Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that the second person — also described as an intelligence official — has first-hand knowledge of some of the allegations outlined in the original complaint and has been interviewed by the head of the intelligence community’s internal watchdog office, Michael Atkinson.
The existence of a second whistleblower — particularly one who can speak directly about events involving the president related to conversations involving Ukraine — could undercut Trump’s repeated insistence that the original complaint, released on Sept. 26, was “totally inaccurate.”
That original seven-page complaint alleged that Trump pushed a foreign power to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son, Hunter, and that unnamed senior White House officials then tried to “lock down” all records of the phone call.
I guess some other things that could undercut that would be the summary of the phone call that the White House itself released, which completely confirmed all the first whistleblower’s allegations even before they were made public, or perhaps Trump’s repeated public statements since then that he did exactly what the whistleblower alleged. But it’s Trumpland, so we have to keep pretending that there’s some sort of question of fact involved here.
On an unrelated topic, I hope Elizabeth has something to say about Ginger Baker, who died today at the age of 80. I don’t have the technical competence to discuss him as a musician, but I think it’s fair to say that Cream is possibly the most influential rock band of all time in terms of output-to-influence ratio, and Baker may have been an even more important factor in that development than Eric Clapton.