https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-impeachment-inquiry-democrats-whistleblo
Congressional Democrats are obstructing the impeachment inquiry.
You heard that right. It has become rote for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and his fellow Democrats to chide the Trump administration for blocking testimony from White House staffers and the president’s private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Yet, those witnesses actually have confidentiality privileges that are well settled in federal law, shielding communications between the chief executive and his top advisers, and between attorney and client, from disclosure.
When a person asserts a privilege recognized by law, we don’t call that obstruction. We call it the law in action.
By contrast, Schiff is playing a lawless game with the so-called whistleblower: predicating the impeachment inquiry on this intelligence official’s complaint while blocking Republicans from questioning the official and other policy officials with whom he dealt. The suppression of relevant information obstructs the congressional investigation.
I have argued from the outset that the “whistleblower” is not actually a whistleblower in the strict legal sense because the statute governing the protection of such sources is inapposite. (That is, the statute covers disclosures relating to activities of the intelligence services, not the president’s conduct of foreign relations.) For present purposes, though, let’s assume I am wrong and that the “whistleblower” is covered.
If this were a legal case, there is not a court in America that would keep the whistleblower’s identity and the details of his role in the origins of the Democrats’ Ukraine investigation under wraps.
Congressional Democrats 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.