Whistleblower story is getting complicated.

     "The case docket of national security whistleblower lawyers like me have been against the FBI, CIA, NSA, and intelligence agency contractors for lying, setting up the innocent, domestic spying, etc.  Only in the age of Trump and Democratic resentment could those agencies now be the heroes, authors and celebrated pundits.  It is obscene."

               Thad Guyer, Whistleblower Attorney

Democrats and much of the media jumped on the hero whistleblower bandwagon. The story was messy from the beginning, with Trump pointing at "Crooked Biden." 

Congress may end up looking crooked, too. This could backfire. 

Whistleblowing can be professional suicide for the whistleblower, but it puts into danger everyone associated with that whistleblower. Institutions under attack look at every possible basis for undermining the motives and credibility of the whistleblower.

Trump was blasting Adam Schiff from the start. "Pencil neck." "Traitor." This morning the Fox and Friends hosts are grinning; the Fox website headlines "Shaft from Schiff?" If Schiff is tarnished it tarnishes the overall impeachment effort.

To do whistleblowing right, one needs to be clean as a whistle.

Today, we add a perspective from whistleblower expert, Thad Guyer. Attorney Thad Guyer specializes on litigation on behalf of employee whistleblowers. A big part of his practice is representing federal employees, many of which he does on behalf of GAP, the Government Accountability Project, a national program promoting corporate and government accountability by protecting whistleblowers. Others he does independently at T M Guyer and Ayers & Friends, PC Click: http://www.guyerayers.com

Guyer

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

The more we hear about the Ukraine whistleblower complaint, the more tarnished it looks.  First, Mark Zaid, the whistleblower's lawyer, says 60 Minutes has put out fake news about his client "needing protection".  Click 

Second, Tom Devine, a founder of GAP, who has participated in litigating over a thousand whistleblower cases, has chastised Congress over the flagrant outing of the whistleblower, and defended Trump's security chief for actually handling the case correctly.  Click: On the Media.  

Third, the New York Times has set off a new firestorm in reporting that Shifty Schiff, staff had undisclosed contacts with the deep state whistleblower before he and Zaid filed any whistleblower complaint, this apparently contradicting Schiff's prior answer that he had nothing to do with whistleblower complaint and read about when everyone else did. See below.

Click: NY Times today

The reason Zaid, Devine and I and other whistleblower lawyers are critical of Shifty Schiff in this is that it is another instance of our clients explicitly using confidential/anonymous channels to make disclosures and otherwise not mess up their careers. This whistleblower's career is now over. This is exactly what Diane Feinstein (or her staff) did to Blasey Ford (and my friend and fellow whistleblower attorney Debra Katz)-- they breached confidentiality and outed her to use as political fodder, and really wrecked her life. Yes, once outed, then our clients have to fight for their professional lives and that has the bitter-sweet success for their lawyers like Mark and Debbie and Tom. 

But all of us now are cautioning our clients that they cannot trust Congress in the age of Trump-hate to honor their word, because politicians will make sure a leak happens.

Politically of course, the impeachment based on Trump's Ukraine call is already dead, and will drag Democrats to the bottom of the swamp. If you want to impeach Trump after Mueller gave him a pass without findings of fact of criminality of any kind, then you better be very clean yourself, Sam Erwin kind of clean, or else you are going to be killed in the airstrike you called in on your enemy.  

Trump has only just begun to win this one big time.

Yuk.


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