By Benjamin Wermund WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. John Cornyn on Friday morning tore into the whistleblower whose complaint about President Donald Trump sparked House Democrats’ impeachment push, questioning whether the person even qualifies as a whistleblower.
“How can you be a whistle-blower if you are merely relying what other, unnamed people are telling you, i.e., no personal knowledge?” Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general and Texas Supreme Court justice, tweeted. His post echoed comments he made earlier this week when he argued on the Senate floor that “the alleged whistleblower doesn’t legally qualify as a whistleblower.”
Cornyn let loose on Twitter less than an hour after Trump tweeted: “Sounding more and more like the so-called Whistle-blower isn’t a Whistleblower at all. In addition, all second hand information that proved to be so inaccurate that there may not have even been somebody else, a leaker or spy, feeding it to him or her? A partisan operative?”
Cornyn echoed several of those points.
“Why did Inspector General of Intelligence Community believe the complaint showed ‘some indica (sic) of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate, i.e. donating to Joe Biden?’ ” he tweeted, followed by: “What are we to make of fact the complainant’s lawyer is aformer Schumer/Hillary staffer?”
The New York Times on Thursday reported the whistleblower is a CIA officer who had been detailed to work at the White House. The complaint alleges the the president was using his office “to solicit interference from a foreign country” to boost his reelection prospects in a call with the Ukrainian president. The whistleblower further alleges that senior White House officials had intervened to “lock down” all records of the call, especially the rough transcript produced by note-takers in the White House Situation Room, which was released to the public this week.
While the inspector general did find “arguable political bias,” he also concluded that “such evidence did not change my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern ‘appears credible,’ particularly given the other information the (intelligence community inspector general) obtained during its preliminary review.”
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from attempting to discredit the whistleblower.
Appearing on Fox News on Friday morning, Sen. Ted Cruz referred to the allegations as part of a “so-called whistleblower complaint.”
“Washington is always a circus, but this is three rings with all the clowns, and this is nuts right now,” Cruz said. ben.wermund@chron.com