“IC WHISTLEBLOWER UPDATE: I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General,” the attorney, Andrew Bakaj, said in a tweet. “No further comment at this time.”
Mark Zaid, who also is a member of the original whistleblower’s legal team, confirmed to The Washington Post that the team is now representing a second whistleblower, who works in the intelligence community. The second individual has spoken to the inspector general of the intelligence community and has not filed a complaint. “Doesn’t need to,” Zaid said in a text message to The Post.
This person has “first hand knowledge that supported the first whistleblower,” Zaid said. He added that he does not know whether the individual is the same person who was mentioned in a New York Times report on Friday.
News that the original whistleblower’s team is representing a second whistleblower was first reported Sunday by ABC News.
Trump on Sunday continue to lash out at Democrats and some Republican detractors, including Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), whose impeachment the president demanded Saturday after Romney criticized him.
“The Democrats are lucky that they don’t have any Mitt Romney types,” Trump tweeted. “They may be lousy politicians, with really bad policies (Open Borders, Sanctuary Cities etc.), but they stick together!”
Trump’s Republican primary challengers also sharply criticized the president’s actions on Sunday.
Former congressman Joe Walsh (R.-Ill.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he considers Trump “a traitor” who “is a threat to this country” and “deserves to be impeached.”
“Nobody from the White House and no high-level Republicans are on the show today, because there’s nothing to defend,” Walsh said, referring to host Jake Tapper’s claim that while the show had contacted the White House and Republicans in both chambers of Congress, no one had agreed to come on to address the impeachment charges. “There’s enough we know now to impeach this president.”
Former South Carolina governor and congressman Mark Sanford (R), who appeared on the show alongside Walsh, called the descriptions of Trump’s behavior “troubling” and “wrong” but stopped short of deeming it impeachable.
Asked whether he’d vote for impeachment if he were in the House now, Sanford said, “I don’t know. I suspect so.”
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, defended Trump in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz” in which he argued that “there’s nothing wrong with” the president asking foreign countries to investigate Biden.
“I mean, the fact is — the president of the United States has every right to ask countries to help us in a criminal investigation that should be undertaken,” Giuliani said.
Asked by host Howard Kurtz about the fact that Biden is Trump’s political opponent, Giuliani responded, “Well, I can’t help that. Suppose the political opponent committed murder, what are we going to do? He’s a political opponent, so you don’t investigate him?”
Giuliani was named in the whistleblower’s complaint and in an official memorandum about Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky as being a key intermediary in back-channel efforts to dig up evidence on the allegations against Biden.
NSP