‘He’ll serve for 50 years’: Rand Paul worried Ukraine whistleblower unaccountable to bosses – Washington Examiner

Sen. Rand Paul is hesitant to believe that his colleagues will call the alleged Ukraine whistleblower to testify even as the Senate Intelligence Committee may be gearing up to investigate the origins of the impeachment case against President Trump.

The Kentucky Republican, who read aloud the name of the alleged whistleblower on the Senate Floor Tuesday after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to do so last week during the question phase of the impeachment trial, suspects the person will remain in his current post as an intelligence analyst without oversight concerning his past actions.

The problem is that they've played it artfully where he'll probably never be called, and nothing ever happen[s] to him. He'll serve for 50 years over there, and everybody who's his boss will be worried that he's somebody who will inform on you at the drop of a hat, Paul told the Washington Examiner. And I consider him so much different than, like, Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden revealed something. No one would reveal this guy, reveal something that 400 people already knew. And most of them didn't have a problem with a phone call," he added, referring to the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked highly classified surveillance information and fled the United States in 2013.

Paul is not a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but a fellow Republican who is, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, shares similar concerns about the whistleblower and where this person is stationed.

And if we ever find out that there was a group of people within the government that were working together to craft something like this, that elements of which may turn out to be disproven, then we've got a big problem," Rubio told the Washington Examiner.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham told Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures that "the Senate Intel Committee under Richard Burr has told us that we will call the whistleblower." He added, "I want to find out how all this crap started."

I'm looking at the whistleblower process, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, told reporters Monday when asked about the investigation. He added, You know, I've never done investigations in public and won't be either.

Other committee members are interested in finding out more about the genesis of the whistleblower complaint filed with the inspector general on Aug. 12 about a July 25 phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Under pressure, Trump released the transcript of what he describes as the "perfect call" and claimed he was only interested in rooting out alleged corruption.

Democrats, who charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, accused the president of improperly pressuring Kyiv to announce investigations into his political rivals, including Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, by leveraging congressionally approved military aid and a White House meeting. Trump's legal team has argued that his actions are not impeachable, and the president is expected to be acquitted in a vote scheduled for Wednesday.

According to Rubio, the whistleblower issue has been on the committees agenda since the news of the complaint went public.

The committee has been following the whistleblower issue since the [complaint was filed on Aug. 12]. The initial meeting was with the interim director of national intelligence. It is in the intelligence committee. My sense is thatll continue," the senator said.

Some Republicans believe the whistleblower is CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella and want to know if there was any coordination prior to the filing of the complaint with aides for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.

One particular Schiff aide, Sean Misko, previously worked with the alleged whistleblower at the National Security Council, the Washington Examiner reported, and sat behind Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, during open hearings for the House impeachment investigation as well as on the Senate floor during the trial.

Well, I think beyond the allegations that were made, there are legitimate questions that should be answered about the genesis of the complaint. Whose idea was it? Who helped write it? How much communication was there between members of staffers on the House Intelligence Committee and the whistleblower and so forth, Rubio contended.

And you can't hide behind the argument that, Well, we can't discuss that, or you'll out the whistleblower. These people most certainly have a right to go forward and talk to the Intelligence Committee, but Chairman Schiff lied about it. He's been telling us for two weeks that if you're hiding something or you're lying about it, it's evidence of wrongdoing, so at a minimum, it's a legitimate question," he added.

Schiff has disputed accusations that he knows the identity of the whistleblower and excoriated his opponents for questioning his staff's involvement. "I will not dignify those smears," the California Democrat said last week in response to an impeachment question about why he hired Misko.

Sen. Jim Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican and Intelligence Committee member, told the Washington Examiner the whistleblower issue is not an intelligence matter.

I don't know of anything that I need to know on the whistleblower at this point. There hasn't been a question on the process they went through to be able to determine. Who he was is not the issue. It's did they go through the right legal process? It looks pretty obvious they did. Where you've got the filing of the whistleblower reports, it went through review and determined this is not an intel-related issue, he said.

This needs to go to a different lane," Lankford said. "The one big unknown there that we've got to be able to resolve is even after it was determined by the Department of Justice, 'This is not correct. This is not an actual intel-related item,' they pulled it back over anyway and said, 'No, we're declaring this urgent' and pulled it out through those channels anyway. So that's the inspector general issue to resolve.

He added, When you were told by someone above you, 'hey, you're in the wrong lane here,' you typically get in the right lane, not try to be able to find a way to force it out.

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'He'll serve for 50 years': Rand Paul worried Ukraine whistleblower unaccountable to bosses - Washington Examiner