Jim Jordan demands Ukraine whistleblower's identity be revealed despite Trump's threats

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Tuesday that the identity of the whistleblower who triggered the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump should be made public.

“The American people have a right to know the individual who started this process to try to remove the president of the United States 13 months before an election,” Jordan told reporters.

He argued that removing Trump from the presidency based on “that guy’s complaint” was unwarranted, ignoring the facts that have since emerged corroborating the whistleblower’s concerns, which center around Trump’s requests to Ukraine to launch an investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden.

Asked about the whistleblower’s right to anonymity, Jordan was dismissive.

“He has a right to protection, that’s what the whistleblower statute says, it doesn’t say anonymity,” Jordan claimed. “And I think when you’re talking about the president of the United States, for goodness sake, the American people, the American people who we all represent, they have a right to know.”

Earlier in the appearance, Jordan also called on reporters to aid in unmasking the whistleblower’s identity.

“I would hope that you all would be pushing for that,” he told them.

Current federal law does not require whistleblowers to reveal themselves and in fact such anonymity is used to protect them.

As the Washington Post has noted, “Federal whistleblower protection laws and most states’ laws make it illegal to retaliate against an employee who reports employer violations or misconduct.”

The inspector general for the intelligence community has already said that the information offered by the whistleblower was credible and that they in fact had “official and authorized access to the information and sources referenced” in the complaint, despite Republican assertions to the contrary.

The whistleblower’s lawyers have already raised safety concerns about their identity being revealed.

“The events of the past week have heightened our concerns that our client’s identity will be disclosed publicly and that, as a result, our client will be put in harm’s way,” lawyer Andrew Bakaj wrote in a letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.

Trump himself has suggested in the past that the whistleblower and those that helped them are spies and traitors, and should be put to death.

“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” he said at a private event in New York last month.

“You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.