Rejecting how House Democrats have "overblown" the whistleblower protection, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., fired back at Chief Justice John Roberts' silencing of his Senate impeachment trial question Thursday because it allegedly outed the identity of the whistleblower, whom they claim not to know.
"My question did not identify anyone as a whistleblower or refer to anyone as a whistleblower," Paul told Fox News' "The Story" with Martha MacCallum. "But my question did discuss two Obama partisans who worked in the National Security Council (NSC). One of them now works for Adam Schiff, and one of them is someone who was involved in the origins of the impeachment inquiry."
The two names, which can be seen on Paul's tweets Thursday, are "friends for a long time," Paul told MacCallum.
"There are stories and reports now that they, a few years ago were overheard saying 'we have to do everything we can to take down the president, to bring down the president,'" Paul said. "And lo and behold, these two friends are still intimately involved, and the story even thickens from there."
Paul said there are three people working for Schiff's staff that used to work together on the NSC, who all know Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman – who testified against President Donald Trump in the House impeachment inquiry – and his twin brother, Yevgeny. The latter is a lawyer on the NSC who reportedly reviews manuscripts for classified material – such as John Bolton's book.
"My question is did they have discussions predating the official impeachment inquiry – maybe even predating by a year or two," Paul said. "We know that Adam Schiff was dishonest when he said there was no contact.
"And I think that people ought to be able to discuss that," he added. "So, I am disappointed that question was shut down."
Paul said they need to be asked if they were assisting and "coaching" in what turned out to be a contested whistleblower complaint – contested because it did not include firsthand knowledge of alleged misdeeds as the whistleblower statute used to require.
Paul then referred to a question from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., about whether it would be impeachable to "hire a foreign spy from Britain to get a dossier on someone like what happened to President Trump."
"That's the problem with having this low level or low standard for impeachment," Paul said. "I had a lot of policy disagreements with President [Barack] Obama, but I didn't call to impeach him.
"If we lower the standard and dumb it down, everybody's going to be impeaching everybody, and it's going to be a disaster for our country."
Paul expressed support for whistleblowers, including the expatriated Edward Snowden, who exposed U.S. government surveillance abuses and now lives in Russia.
"If this was a concocted plot to bring down the president, that's not what the whistleblower statute was about," Paul concluded. "But also the whistleblower statute doesn't guarantee that you're anonymous; it guarantees you're not fired.
"So, I don't want to fire this whistleblower, but the president deserves that this whistleblower come forward. And I never identified anyone as a whistleblower, that's why it's unfair to exclude my question."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.