Trump attacks anonymity of whistleblower but will not utter the name

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is blasting the media for not reporting the name of a person who has been identified in conservative circles as the whistleblower who spurred the impeachment inquiry. Yet Trump has carefully avoided using the name himself.

Exposing whistleblowers can be dicey, even for a president. For one thing, it could be a violation of federal law to identify the whistleblower. While there’s little chance Trump could face charges, revealing the name could give Democrats more impeachment fodder. It could also prompt a backlash among some Senate Republicans who have long defended whistleblowers.

And, despite wanting the name to be disclosed, Trump sees some benefits to keeping it secret. The anonymity makes it easier for Trump to undermine the credibility of the person behind the complaint as well as the complaint itself, according to three officials and Republicans close to the White House not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations. It also allows him to bash the media for supposedly protecting the whistleblower.

In recent weeks, a name has circulated in conservative media of a man said to be the whistleblower. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., on Wednesday tweeted a link to a story on the Breitbart website that used the name. He also included the name in his tweet.

U.S. whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials. Lawmakers in both parties have historically backed those protections. The Associated Press typically does not reveal the identity of whistleblowers.

The identity of the whistleblower is almost a moot point: Much of the unnamed person’s August complaint about Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been corroborated and expanded upon by officials’ on-the-record, congressional testimony and the reconstructed, partial transcript of the call released by the White House.

In a statement shortly after Trump Jr.’s tweet, the whistleblower’s attorneys warned that “Identifying any suspected name for the whistleblower will place that individual and their family at risk of serious harm.”