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ShazamIam

(2,738 posts)
Fri Jan 17, 2025, 01:24 PM 10 hrs ago

Warning-to-Whistleblowers-We-Are-Back-in-the-Days-of-the-Red-Scare: from Mother Jones

This is something I have been worried about recently and I appreciate that Mother Jones has provided an article about it. I do believe that Trump will see that whistleblowers are punished for coming forth with the truth.

Government employees who report possible malfeasance are almost certain to be targeted by the second Trump administration. Mark Zaid is a lawyer likely to represent some of them; over the past two decades, he has provided legal counsel to a long list of federal employees and intelligence officers, including whistleblowers.

His most high-profile whistleblower case, however, was that of the intelligence officer who reported to an inspector general that then-President Donald Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on his presidential rival. While dangling military aid to Ukraine that Congress already had approved, Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate the family of Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender to face Trump in 2020. This whistleblower’s 2019 report led to Trump’s first impeachment case.

The case of that whistleblower—whose identity Zaid has never revealed publicly—was far from the first time a concerned citizen came forward with potentially damaging information about the government: In 2002, FBI special agent Coleen Rowley wrote a letter to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller alleging that the agency failed to properly investigate a terrorist later found to be connected to the September 11 attacks. Another whistleblower was military police officer Joseph Darby, who informed the Army Criminal Investigation Division of pictures showing US military personnel torturing inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

More at: Government employees who report possible malfeasance are almost certain to be targeted by the second Trump administration. Mark Zaid is a lawyer likely to represent some of them; over the past two decades, he has provided legal counsel to a long list of federal employees and intelligence officers, including whistleblowers.

His most high-profile whistleblower case, however, was that of the intelligence officer who reported to an inspector general that then-President Donald Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on his presidential rival. While dangling military aid to Ukraine that Congress already had approved, Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate the family of Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender to face Trump in 2020. This whistleblower’s 2019 report led to Trump’s first impeachment case.

The case of that whistleblower—whose identity Zaid has never revealed publicly—was far from the first time a concerned citizen came forward with potentially damaging information about the government: In 2002, FBI special agent Coleen Rowley wrote a letter to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller alleging that the agency failed to properly investigate a terrorist later found to be connected to the September 11 attacks. Another whistleblower was military police officer Joseph Darby, who informed the Army Criminal Investigation Division of pictures showing US military personnel torturing inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

More at:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/warning-to-whistleblowers-we-are-back-in-the-days-of-the-red-scare/

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