Episode 8: The Ukraine Whistleblower

The Michigan man who wrote the email was indicted by the FBI but he didn’t act for lack of motivation. President Donald Trump had encouraged such extreme, violent behavior from his fan base the day before. At a rally in Louisiana, Trump held up a photo of Zaid and said, "From the lawyer, a sleazeball.” Security details were necessary to keep both Zaid and Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower’s legal counsel safe, as well as their families. 

“The whistleblower followed the guidelines laid out in the law. Should he have done otherwise — say, by leaking his complaint to the press,” Zaid states, “the law cannot protect you. There is one issue with whistleblower law, however: It doesn’t seem to apply to the president.” This places the Ukraine whistleblower — and any future whistleblower — at risk.

Trump tweets - “If he’s the whistleblower, he has no credibility....There is no Whistleblower. There is someone with an agenda against Donald Trump.” At a rally in Kentucky, the US senator Rand Paul urged reporters: “Do your job and print his name!” Trump applauded. Trump Jr. starts hypothesizing suspects over social media.

The Government Accountability Project, Irvin McCullough explains how the Intelligence Authorization Act, Presidential Policy Directive 19 and the Inspector General Act of 1978 all clearly state a whistleblower’s right to anonymity. “To assert that anyone is the whistleblower, especially when they’re fearing for their lives, is wholly irresponsible and reckless.”

Former US National Security Advisor, John Bolton examines the room as he is mic’d for camera. Bolton, could have been a key witness at the impeachment of President Trump. In a nearly party-line vote, the Senate decided not to hear testimony from witnesses or review evidence. Bolton had never seen such behavior. It was alarming. He heard Trump explicitly say that the withholding of military aid would continue until Ukraine announced an investigation involving the Bidens. Confirming the implication of Trump directly in a quid pro quo. The President broke the Impoundment Control Act - only Congress has the power to revoke funding. This was a direct violation of the Constitution.

The GOP-led Senate absolves itself from its responsibility of oversight and acquits Trump in February. His retaliation begins immediately with the firing of six Inspector Generals. 

 It’s summer in DC. At the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight offices, Director of Public Policy, Liz Hempowicz describes the chaos unfolding, "We are seeing right now, a true crisis in terms of the ability for there to be independent oversight and accountability within the executive branch. The scale of Trump’s dismissals would have been "completely unimaginable" to those who passed the post-Watergate law to establish inspector generals.”

Stanford Professor and Democracy Scholar, Larry Diamond, "A lot of people have asked me to put this in historical perspective. Their function, to provide independent oversight has been utterly suppressed by the Trump administration." 

Michael Atkinson, IG of the Intelligence Community is the seventh intelligence official to be fired, ousted or moved aside in 6 months. Atkinson unbuttons his jacket and takes a seat, “2020 was a searing time for whistleblowers. Support of whistleblowers will be rendered meaningless if they actually come forward in good faith with concerning information and are allowed to be vilified, threatened, publicly ridiculed, or worse, utterly abandoned.” If he had to do it all over again? “ I’d still forward the whistleblower complaint.” 

As Trump was removing Atkinson, the number of U.S. deaths due to the virus topped 7,000. Eight months later U.S. deaths have risen to over 400,000.

The film’s director Edelman, “Do you regret how you handled whistleblowers? Your administration attacked more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined. It could be said you set the stage for this. Do you feel any responsibility for the war against whistleblowers that we have witnessed during this deadly pandemic?” The camera pans out to reveal President Barack Obama.