Trump Impeachment: US President Faces Firestorm After Identifying Alleged Whistleblower

Donald Trump faced calls from his own party to show more restraint on Twitter as the White House faced a storm of outrage Sunday over the president revealing the name of a man widely thought to be the whistleblower who triggered his impeachment. Trump has faced growing criticism since retweeting an attack that included the name of the reported CIA staffer at the heart of the Ukraine scandal—an act that could violate the whistleblower’s guaranteed anonymity under the law.

“If the president would tweet a little bit less, it wouldn’t cause brain damage. But the president does not have to take my advice, nor do I expect him to,” Republican Senator John Kennedy, a key Trump ally said.

Noah Bookbinder, who heads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), posted that “the president using his power and position to expose and implicitly threaten the Ukraine whistleblower is—like so much else he has done—utterly beyond the pale.”

House Republican whip Steve Scalise attempted a defense of Trump’s repeated demands for a Senate appearance from the whistleblower—purportedly an intelligence analyst who said Trump linked US aid to Ukraine to his demand for the Biden investigation.

“Look, the whistleblower should have testified a long time ago,” Scalise said.

Trump allegedly made a telephone call to Ukrain President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, who was had served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Joe Biden is a leading contender in the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. There has been no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Bidens.

Trump hit back at Democrats saying that House Democrats ‘looked like a bunch of fools…they’ll receive a big backlash at the box office.’ Addressing at a Christmas rally in Michigan, Trump said that the Democrats have ‘branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame.’ Michigan rally was seen as Trump’s answer to the proceedings at the House of Representatives that impeached him in historic vote.