McCarthy : Democrats obstructing impeachment inquiry

Forgive McCarthy for taking a legal approach to this 

Unlike classified information, the law does not even cloak whistleblowers in secrecy. It merely protects them from reprisals for revealing information that may be embarrassing or incriminating.

The only official that the statute directs to keep the whistleblower’s identity confidential is the inspector general of the intelligence community (ICIG), to whom a whistleblower makes his report. But even that direction is limited. The statute states that the ICIG may reveal a whistleblower’s identity in two situations. First, disclosure is permitted when “disclosure is unavoidable” if the matter is to be investigated properly. Second, consistent with what I’ve outlined above, the ICIG may disclose the identity to the Justice Department for purposes of its determination of whether a prosecution is appropriate.

The reason for these exceptions is obvious. If a whistleblower’s complaint is going to lead to a full-blown investigation or a prosecution, it is not possible to keep the whistleblower’s identity a secret. People who are subjected to an investigation or prosecution have a due process right to defend themselves.

In a normal investigation, if the government told a court that it wanted to proceed against a suspect but withhold information relevant to the prosecution, the judge would be outraged. The court would inform the government that if it wanted to prioritize secrecy, it would have to dismiss the case; but if it wanted to proceed with the case, it would have to disclose. To proceed with an accusation but suppress the information the accused needs for purposes of investigating and confronting the accusation is obstruction of the truth-seeking process.

That is precisely what congressional Democrats are doing. They are not merely withholding the identity of the whistleblower. They are denying committee Republicans the right to question other witnesses about relevant dealings with the whistleblower.

For example, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who is scheduled to testify in a public hearing on Nov. 19, is believed to have consulted with the whistleblower. Those interactions bear on his knowledge and possible bias, which are highly relevant issues.

Yet, when the committee interviewed him behind closed doors, Schiff repeatedly cut off questioning that touched on the whistleblower – on the bogus rationale that permitting this entirely reasonable line of inquiry might compromise the whistleblower’s interest in confidentiality.

That is, the truth-seeking process was subverted to protect “rights” that the “whistleblower” does not actually have to both anonymity and insulation from examination.

That is absurd. The statute imposes no prohibition on Congress from revealing the whistleblower’s identity. And as we’ve seen, it does not even inhibit the ICIG from revealing the identity if doing so facilitates an investigation.

This is one big giant case of gaslighting by the Democrats. They have taken the legal idea of limited protections for a whistleblower (such as loss of employment or other reprisals) and prevents the I.G. from revealing his source without the person's consent.

But there are no laws (or anything even remotely relating to common sense) about a whistleblower being protected by Congress, the media, or within some sort of legal proceeding. McCarthy is 100% correct when he states that if this was a criminal prosecution (rather than a political show) that a judge would never allow the government to withhold information from the accused for any reason. If they chose to do so, then they would have to drop the case.

In this charade, it's not just the whistleblower information that is being withheld from the accused, it's all sorts of relevant testimony and information. One of the fastest way for a prosecutor to have their case overturned and set a defendant free is to withhold relative information from the defense. But in the case of the Schiffshow... withholding what they want and releasing what they want is actually the design. The entire basis of their strategy is to break every norm and laws that we have to protect defendants from having their due process taken away.

But... then again, it's the bad orange man. Who is he to deserve due process?

The irony is in spite of stacking the deck, and then dealing off the bottom, the Democrats are still losing this impeachment fight in the court of public opinion.