Pierce: Rand Paul Flirts With Outing the Whistleblower at the Senate Impeachment Trial
Rand Paul Flirts With Outing the Whistleblower at the Senate Impeachment Trial
This person is less safe than when they came forward. Senate Republicans are not helping.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JAN 31, 2020
DES MOINES, IOWA—Even from this distance, and even over the radio of a rented car, Chief Justice John Roberts sounded more alive than he had sounded at any time in the past several weeks—except, I guess, when leading the Supreme Court into essentially validating the immigration policy once used by this country against Jews fleeing Hitler in the 1930s. For two days, he had been the leading celebrant in a kind of secular ritual. Senators would ask for recognition, announce that they had a question for one side of the impeachment trial or another—or occasionally, both of them—and Roberts would read the question. Like so much of parliamentary procedure, the process looked like an elaborate variation on “Mother, May I?”
Then Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, rose on Thursday and sent his question to Roberts. The Chief Justice read it, appeared to raise at least one eyebrow, and then said:
Given Roberts’s demeanor during the trial, this was the equivalent of having the Chief throw a brick down the aisle at Senator Aqua Buddha. (If Paul thought Roberts, who had warned against this very ploy on Wednesday, was going to take this obvious hunk of bait, he’s guilty of an act of towering intellectual hubris. I have big problems with a lot of Roberts’s career and a huge percentage of his rulings, but, in a brain-off, I’ll take him against a self-accredited ophthalmologist.) Amazingly, Paul left the chamber and almost immediately called a press gaggle to take issue with what Roberts had done. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:
In other words, Paul outed someone he thinks was the whistleblower to the press and public after Roberts specifically refused to do so in the Senate chamber. This takes big clanging brass ones. Also amazingly, some of Paul’s colleagues, including Iowa’s own Senator Joni Ernst, lined up with him....
Paul is referencing a piece by Paul Sperry, a longtime rightwing columnist who’s been pounding the Deep State sabotage tin drum for two years now. Sperry also throws around a name that has come up in various wingnut circles as being the whistleblower. The whistleblower, whoever he or she is, is now in more danger than was the case when he first came forward anonymously. A good portion of the United States Senate apparently doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. The peril becomes even greater when you factor in the Republicans in the House, and the reckless gnomes of the conservative media.
Once this trial ends, and if it ends in the expected acquittal, the president* is even-money to mention the whistleblower’s name at his rallies from now until the end of the campaign. They simply do not care, any of them.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30721060/rand-paul-whistleblower-senate-impeachment-trial-john-roberts/
