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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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At what point is a whistleblower not one by definition? Much has been written the complete hearsay of their complaint, not to mention all of the descrepancies. It’s like whoever complained made it all up whole cloth.

The rules were simple before they were magically changed somehow to take away the firsthand knowledge requirement, just in time for this person to squeal from fake news reports and other Trump haters in the government and most likely Dems in Congress.

We actually don’t know if that change was made with the proper Federal Records Act procedures or whatever the applicable process is, of which I don’t pretend to know the ins and out. We deserve a paper trail to determine if this major change was actually done or just stamped on this particular complaint.

One person that commented on The Federalist article by Sean Davis said this:

The way it works is the office responsible for the program, in this case probably the CIA IG, decides to revise the form. The new form is revised within the technical office by employees within the office. If they’re doing their jobs in accordance with the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedures Act, there is a document written that details exactly the rationale for the change, the impact of the changes, and what the new form looks like.

In the case of this form, since it involves a legal issue (the IC Whistleblower Protection Act) it also should have gone to the CIA or IC Office of General Counsel for a legal review to ensure the new form still complied with the Act. That file should also still be in the OGC’s office.

Finally the form is sent to the CIA’s HR department, specifically the Forms Control Officer. That office then reviews it to ensure the form complies with the CIA’s form control directive. When it does, the new form is formally approved by an official with the CIA’s HR department. The form is then printed (if hard copies are used) and also promulgated online, the old form is removed, and employees SOMETIMES are made aware that a new form is out. The HR file should also still be in the HR department.

If the form was developed and promulgated correctly there is an adequate paper trail to determine who and when the form was revised.

Sounds reasonable and someone with more knowledge can advise if this describes the process correctly.

We do know that the normal procedure is for a whistleblower (WB for short) is to file a complaint with the IG of their department. In September 2017, President Trump nominated Christopher Sharpley to be the CIA’s Inspector General and was acting in that role, until FoxNews reported late last July that he decided to step down after three decades of service and withdraw his IG nomination.

Sharpley is also withdrawing his inspector general nomination, CNN reported.

The Senate wasn’t prepared to advance Sharpley’s nomination until a resolution to complaints from two former CIA employees-turned-whistleblowers who alleged retaliation, according to a congressional aide who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

“Sharpley figured out he wasn’t going to be confirmed and decided to step aside,” said John Tye, executive director of Whistleblower Aid, who is representing two of the complainants alleging retaliation.

One complainant is Jonathan Kaplan, 59, a former special agent and investigator in the inspector general’s office who spent 33 years at the CIA.

A second is Andrew Bakaj, 35, who worked in that office as a special agent from 2012 to 2015. He was instrumental in developing agency regulations governing whistleblower reprisal investigations.

Wait a minute! How many people are named Andrew Bakaj? Isn’t the WB’s lawyer at the We Pay Whistleblowers law firm?

Why that is him! What a coincidence! From just a few days ago, per the Washintonian.com:

Andrew Bakaj is lead counsel, while Mark Zaid is co-counsel. Both are well known national security attorneys. In an interview with Washingtonian, Zaid says the representation first came to Bakaj as a “a typical case referral,” and then Bakaj brought Zaid in to help. Before Bakaj founded his own firm, Compass Rose Legal Group, he was an investigator in the inspector general’s offices at both the CIA and the Department of Defense, working on probes into whistleblower reprisals. “He actually wrote the CIA’s internal rules on whistleblowing. He’s one of the best people suited for this representation,” says Zaid.  […]

Not only that, Bakaj has himself been a whistleblower. It’s how he and Zaid initially met, because Bakaj retained Zaid as his own counsel. Back when Bakaj worked for the CIA inspector general in 2014, he was retaliated against by superiors who wanted to out whistleblowers within the agency, according to a Yahoo News story from earlier this month. At the time, per the article: “The intelligence community’s inspector general, which conducts independent audits and reviews across the spy agencies, was investigating concerns about potential evidence manipulation at the CIA inspector general’s office, issues that Bakaj and others, some of whom still remain anonymous, had raised.”

Being that there is no CIA IG or acting one to my knowledge, I guess his (I’m sticking with that pronoun until told otherwise for ease) complaint had to be filed with the IC IG.

Yet that is not what happened. The WB first approached the CIA general council who then took the complaint to the White House Office of Legal Council.

Multiple people familiar with the matter told The New York Times that the whistleblower brought a broad complaint to Courtney Simmons Elwood, the CIA general counsel, the week after the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. […]

Elwood tried to evaluate if there was a “reasonable basis” for the concerns raised by the anonymous whistleblower and spoke with John Eisenberg, a deputy White House counsel, the Times reports. According to the newspaper, the initial allegations brought to the CIA counsel only reported that major questions existed about one of Trump’s calls with a foreign leader, with the counsel later learning that multiple people raised concerns about the call. (my emphasis in bold)

ACLJ talked about this anomaly on their radio show yesterday and recapped here on their website:

This so-called whistleblower made a mistake. This person did not go to the Inspector General for the intelligence community, first, to avail themselves of the whistleblower statutes. This person went to the General Counsel at the CIA and told him about what they had overheard, not heard directly, overheard. It wasn’t until after that when this person filed the complaint.

Legally the allegations in this complaint are called hearsay. We established on the show yesterday that none of this would be admissible in court. This individual doesn’t even really qualify to be called a “whistleblower.” They didn’t even take necessary steps for the protection of anonymity granted to actual whistleblowers.

Surely the WH legal council advised the president, no?

And then the events as we know it unfolded. Trump released the call transript, the OLC’s opinion that it wasn’t a reliable account due to hearsay and had political bias against Trump’s rival, then Trump released the WB complaint. In essence, it seems like Trump knew what was coming and did his best to get out infront of the coming firestorm.

What are the chances he knew this would push Pelosi over the edge and call for a “real” impeachment inquiry and this time she’s not kidding. Well we still don’t have Articles of Impeachment nor a full House vote. Trump and every other Republican in the House should be demanding that all the people’s voices be heard. Take a full House vote now.

What gives one anonymous person who didn’t follow the Whistleblower Act procedures to put impeachment in motion?

The deep state saga continues while the Constitution is weeping after being trampled by the Democrats.