Donald Trump yesterday called for outing the whistleblower behind the impeachment inquiry threatening his presidency and sought to transform the entire scandal into a boost for his 2020 reelection campaign.
Trump began his attempt to crush impeachment on Tuesday with a breathtaking show of defiance to Congress. In an eight-page letter signed by the White House counsel, the administration bluntly announced it would not cooperate with the Democratic-led House of Representatives, calling its impeachment push illegitimate.
Democrats responded by accusing Trump of stonewalling and obstruction. “No one is above the law, not even President Trump,” the Democratic majority leader in the House, Steny Hoyer, said yesterday.
Now Trump is demanding that the whistleblower, who reported the president’s alleged pressure on Ukraine to dig up dirt on Democratic election rival Joe Biden, be exposed. The identity of whistleblowers is protected by law.
On Twitter, which Trump is using to bombard the public with conspiracy theories about a secret “deep state” trying to remove him from power, the president argued that the whistleblower had been shown to be partisan and inaccurate.