danger. and that s where i think, you know, a public statement. when i say public statement, it s not necessarily for the media. i think mcguire has to talk to all the intelligence community personnel and very clearly say two things. one is that we re going to protect the identity. you know, it s also clear that the whistle-blower has, you know, outstanding legal representation and that s something that the rank and file will be looking to. and then the final point is there will be kind of physical security protection. but there is another piece of this too and i think you have to it s more nuanced with with director hasball. now, she can t necessarily come out and defend the whistle-blower because that almost acknowledges his or her affiliation and, you know, i don t know the affiliation, i don t know the name. and so that s almost irrelevant. but what i think she can do is that she really has, and we ve seen this especially when i was there, she has a fairly productive relation
good to have you with us. good morning. so president trump wants to expose the whistle-blower. we heard it there because he thinks that person is making up false stories despite all the testimony we have already heard so far from the impeachment inquiry, and of course the transcript from the now infamous july 25th ukraine call backing up what the whistle-blower has said. so how significant is it that a u.s. president wants to expose a whistle-blower given what we know so far? i think it s less significant with respect to what the whistle-blower testified to than to a chilling effect affecting all federal civil servants. if the standard becomes that if you reveal information that s politically damaging to the president, the whistle-blower protections enshrined in law will no longer be respected and no longer be valid that your identity can be made public, that you can face the sort of storm of public interest and probably from what we have seen a great deal of threatening
questions in written form to the mueller report. i see this as a sideshow. what do you see? i see a sideshow. the notion of saying, we re going to have a response that s vetted. normally you re talking about the president of the united states or any other fact witness, you would kind of shrink away from that and say, i would like to hear to test the person s credibility. but the whistle-blower protection act, this is something that s very generous and magnanimous, frankly, of a whistle-blower who followed the proper channels, did the proper vehicles, and everything he or she was supposed to do. and now is being asked to deliver even more information than that. so they may actually do it will be a little odder, given the fact that you ve got more than a dozen witnesses who have come forward, even voluntarily or under subpoena to the house, and have said exactly what the whistle-blower has said. and the biggest corroborator in all of this, by the way, is the president of the united state
investigators are digging deeper. revealing that months before the call, u.s. diplomats had already begun a campaign to pressure ukraine to investigate the bidens and validate trump s false belief that ukrainian officials helped hillary clinton in the 2016 elections. and now another whistle-blower has come forward. as the days turn to weeks, the march toward impeachment is clearly getting under the president s skin. did you hear me? ask him a question. i will, but i ve given you a long answer, ask this gentleman a question, don t be rude. no, sir, i don t want to be rude, i just wanted you to have a chance to ask the question that i asked you. i ve answered everything. but there s an underlying question. why? why does president trump seem obsessed with ukraine? why has a former soviet republic become so central to american politics? the riot police have now withdrawn from this area in central kiev
burisma or their aid will not be released. if that is revealed is that enough what about mick mulvaney saying it from the podium at the white house saying it was that. he said a portion of that and he didn t say all that and then he did walk it back, but the issue is remember the whistle-blower came forward and they didn t say and the whistle-blower didn t say that there was this quid pro quo and the aid and these investigations. they said there was quid pro quo that you must dig up dirt on my opponent and there was no direct knowledge of the things, and these are people that we ve had depositions for and it s not changed other than the testimony that you ve read of the telephone call as to how it was reported. the testimony has largely backed up what the whistle-blower has said. you don t know that. you haven t seen any of it. we ve seen many of the opening statement. we sautee lorw taylor s opening