this case forward in my view fairly without us knowing who the whistle-blower is and having a chance to cross-examine them about any biases they may have. it is for us to find out who the whistle-blower is, and no american can be accused of a crime based on an anonymous allegation. if there is not really anything that the president said in the phone call that is different than he says in public all of the time. so is there some sort of abuse of power that rises to the threshold that is different than the american people have been hearing for three years? i don t this i don t hear that. and now joining us is robert barnes and cynthia oxford. and so, with the commentings, does it matter if the president makes the comments in public and the second point that no american can be accused of a crime based on the anonymous allegation, and weigh in on those? well, it has been a while
thing one is the notion that unmasking the whistle-blower is the key to everything. the president pushes the idea. who is the whistle-blower? we have to know. is the whistle-blower a spy? and it rolls off the tongues of his allies on capitol hill. frankly i think the american people have a right to know who this whistle-blower is. one, there s a law that makes that not the case. but the intrigue is very intoxicating. but let s look at it with sober eyes and see it for what it is, a none troversy. not only is unmasking potentially illegal and/or proof of witness intimidation or even obstruction of a congressional investigation, it s irrelevant like the whistle-blower. why? practically everybody tidbit of information we learned about, those nine pages from the whistle-blower, they ve been corroborated or improved upon from the white house call transcript, statements by officials, testimony, and good
become all too obvious, a fact all right. ahead of impeachment hearings next week, to avoid what has become all too obvious, a fact pattern of wrongful behavior and arguable abuse of power, gopers have created two main distractions. let s call them thing one and thing two. thing one is the notion that unmasking the whistle-blower is the key to everything. the president pushes the idea. who is the whistle-blower? we have to know. is the whistle-blower a spy? and it rolls off the tongues of his allies on capitol hill. frankly i think the american people have a right to know who this whistle-blower is. one, there s a law that makes that not the case. but the intrigue is very intoxicating. but let s look at it with sober eyes and see it for what it is, a nontroversy. not only is unmasking potentially illegal and/or proof
prohibits outing of witnesses, informants, or activists. i want to bring in oliver darcy because there s even more news when it comes to facebook and social media and this whistle-blower. now we re hearing that social media accounts were actually sharing photos that they claimed were of this whistle-blower, particularly among the right wing social media accounts. but they were completely wrong, right? if you take a step back, right-wing media over the past few weeks has been absolutely obsessed with trying to figure out who this potential whistle-blower is. and so there s been a lot of interest in figuring it out. also painting this person as a potential partisan. so several accounts, a lot of accounts actually, were plastering the wrong image of the wrong person, identifying this person as the potential whistle-blower. this person spoke to cnn, our colleague, and actually said, you know, i m not the whistle-blower. in fact, i couldn t have been the whistle-blower because i left gove
the person who said his name on a fox news show, the guest, was a radio host, a right-wing radio host lars larsen and he is complaining he s getting death threats and people cursing at him. ironic considering, you know, what the whistle-blower s own attorney is saying that he s urging people, notably, members of congress to reflect on the important report of whistle-blowers and the danger that they are put in if revealed. right. this whistle-blower should be non-partisan. it used to be non-partisan. there s a value in a democratic society to create forums and channels where government staffers can come forward with allegations of wrongdoing. i get we re in an incredible situation here with the allegations are against the president, but we don t have to throw away all of the rules in this situation just because of that. you know, the president s still out there demanding to know who this whistle-blower is, but lars larsen doesn t actually know.