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“The whistleblower law will protect them.”

Not necessarily in this case. What Trump did was follow a treaty signed by the Ukraine in 1998 and Clinton in 1999 for a cooperation of the investigation of corruption involving both countries as applied to each other. The act of a non-party person releasing anything within the call containing sensitive information that was requested a secure line be in place, which Trump did, is not the act of a whistle blower. It is the act of espionage.

According to Black’s Law Dictionary, the most used law information source in the US, espionage, or spying, has reference to the crime of “gathering, transmitting or losing” information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States.

Harming a president falls under that category. As long as the politicians lead people to believe it is a whistle blower and not an act of spying, people will buy into that. But the person overhearing the information does not have protection under the WBA.

Furthermore, the only people that could have heard the conversation was the people in the room that Trump wished and members of the CIA and/or FBI. And employees of federal intelligence agencies such as the CIA and FBI do not have the same processes and protections that the WPA provides for other federal workers. They have chains of command they are required to go through that was ignored in this case.

According to the act, a federal employee can report misconduct to the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC).

The act considers misconduct to include:

The OSC does not investigate the claims itself; rather, they review the claim to determine the likelihood of wrongdoing — which the act establishes as having reliable, firsthand knowledge of the misconduct.

If the OSC determines there’s a likelihood of wrongdoing, it refers the claim to the appropriate regulatory or governing agency for further investigation. The agency leading the investigation must investigate the claim and report back to the OSC within 60 days. None of this was accomplished prior to the release of the sensitive information within the call.

The act states that an employee who makes disclosures as a whistle blower and then is subject to retaliatory actions can report the suspected acts of reprisal to the OSC, which would further investigate the charge.

So what do you have? Do you have a whistle blower who did it exactly the way that was in the best interest of a political party illegally just prior to an election when they are getting hammered and the WB doing it knowingly? Or do you have a witness to a possible illegal action by a president that was directed through the proper channels for determination and the need for further investigation.

The first possibility is espionage. The second is the right way to do the passing of information with people that have the security clearance and need to know. The WPA does not cover protection from espionage.

rwood