Democrats erupt in fury as Republican names suspected whistle-blower during prime-time impeachment hearing after repeated demands to keep CIA staffer’s name secret
- Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert named seven people during a Wednesday impeachment hearing who he said should be called as witnesses
- Republicans have complained after Democratic committee chairmen blocked many GOP-favored witnesses
- One of the people Gohmert named is widely thought to have been the Ukraine whistle-blower who launched the impeachment saga
- A Democratic congressman pounced on Twitter; Gohmert didn’t say why he thought the man should testify
During an impeachment hearing, a Republican congressman spoke aloud the name of a man thought to be the famed Ukraine whistle-blower
In an open impeachment hearing Wednesday night, a Republican member of Congress spoke the name of a man widely thought to be the whistle-blower whose complaint about Donald Trump‘s famous phone call with Ukraine‘s president sparked this fall’s impeachment saga.
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert was complaining during a hearing about two articles of impeachment that Democrats have blocked attempts to call fact witnesses who didn’t support their arguments.
Gohmert called ‘abuse of power [and] obstruction of Congress the very things the majority has done in preventing us from having the witnesses that could shed light on this.’
‘We needed to hear from those witnesses, people like Sean Misko, Abigail Grace, [name redacted], Devin Archer, Joe Biden, Nellie Ohr, Alexandra Chalupa and so many others,’ he said.
Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert vented about witnesses Democrats blocked them from calling, including a man whose identity as the whistle-blower one GOP aide says is ‘the worst-kept secret in town’
After a Politico reporter tweeted that Gohmert had outed the whistle-blower, Maryland Democratic Rep. Don Beyer called the move ‘incredible and outrageous’
DailyMail.com has not published the name of the man, who is a Russia and Eurasia expert for the CIA, tasked to the National Intelligence Council and reporting to the director of national intelligence.
A Maryland Democratic congressman reacted on Twitter.
‘House Republicans just committed an incredible and outrageous breach,’ Rep. Don Beyer wrote. ‘The President threatened the whistleblower with violence, and whether the person just named is the whistleblower or not they were just put in real danger. This is unacceptable and there should be consequences.’
Beyer was responding to one of several reporters who tweeted that Gohmert had named the person thought to be the whistle-blower.
Gohmert didn’t describe the person in any way, other than saying he thought the man should testify before lawmakers made up their mind about impeaching Trump.
The CIA analyst’s name has floated around Washington, D.C. for months. A federal whistle-blower protection law forbids the Justice Department inspector general from revealing his name, but doesn’t bar elected officials or private citizens from doing so.
Gohmert never said the man whose name he spoke was the whistle-blower; he named seven people who he thought should be impeachment hearing witnesses, but didn’t explain why
Democrats are steamrolling toward impeaching Donald Trump for abuse of power and contempt of Congress; Trump is pictured Wednesday night showing an executive order combating anti-semitism during a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul did it in November during a radio interview in Washington, a few weeks after urging reporters during a Trump rally to ‘do your job and print his name!’
Asked on WMAL radio about that moment, he mentioned the man by name as a ‘person of interest’ and said he ‘needs to be pulled in for testimony,’
The alleged whistle-blower’s name does appear in a transcript of a closed-door interview of a diplomat that the House Intelligence Committee’s Democratic chairman Adam Schiff released last month.
A House Republican aide said Wednesday night that the whistle-blower’s name is ‘the worst-kept secret in town,’ and added that ‘we should all start putting on our big boy pants, name the guy, and tell him to back up his allegations against Trump.’
The whistle- blower’s account of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was undercut by a summary transcript of the call the White House released later.
Democrats contend it has been largely confirmed.