Trump allies turn to online campaign in quest to unmask Ukraine whistleblower
Tweets on Wednesday by Donald Trump Jr. capped more than a month of efforts by President Donald Trump’s allies to surface the supposed name of a whistleblower whose complaint about a July 25 phone call led to the House’s impeachment inquiry.
Most news organizations, including The Washington Post, have withheld the name of the whistleblower, whose complaint about Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been largely confirmed by diplomats and others with firsthand knowledge as well as by a reconstructed transcript released by the White House. The whistleblower’s name has been kept confidential by U.S. officials, in line with federal law designed to prevent retaliation.
But the supposed name of the whistleblower has been circulating in conservative corners of social media since at least Oct. 3, culminating in Donald Trump Jr.’s Wednesday morning retweet of a Breitbart News article that named an individual — and his inclusion of the person’s name in a later tweet of his own. During one 24-hour period last week, the CIA officer’s name was mentioned in more than 150,000 tweets.
The same officer has also been the subject of an advertising campaign on Facebook, financed by, among others, a North Carolina businessman whose Facebook page is aimed at Christian users. The ads, in which the supposed name of the whistleblower appeared, were viewed several hundred thousand times before Facebook removed them Wednesday in response to a query from the Post.
The campaign on social media to out the whistleblower, who enjoys legal protection from retaliation, intensified as Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress ramped up their calls for the individual to be identified. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., demanded at a
Trump rally on Monday that mainstream news organizations provide a name. These calls were quoted in tweets from Russian state media organizations RT and Sputnik.
The web-enabled effort to identify the whistleblower illustrates the ability of Mr. Trump and his allies to weaponize an army of conservative commentators and social media provocateurs to spread the president’s version of events and combat his critics.
Mr. Trump displayed his willingness to organize these foot soldiers at his “social media summit” over the summer, to which many of the same commentators were invited.
Mr. Trump has called for the whistleblower to be outed, saying he has a right to “meet my accuser.” But if Mr. Trump believes the outlets that he promotes, he already knows his accuser’s name.
The paid Facebook posts in particular alarmed whistleblower advocates. An attorney for the whistleblower, who declined to name his client, said
Facebook and others have an ethical responsibility to protect “those who lawfully expose suspected government wrongdoing.”
“This is particularly significant in this case where I have made it clear time and time again that reporting any suspected name for the whistleblower will place that individual and their family at risk of serious harm,” said the attorney, Andrew Bakaj. “To that end, I am deeply troubled with Facebook seeking to profit from advertising that would place someone in harm’s way. This, frankly, is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.”
Mr. Bakaj, in a letter to the White House dated Thursday, demanded that Mr. Trump stop calling for the publication of the whistleblower’s identity and alleged that his “reckless and dangerous” comments already had intimidated the whistleblower, according to the letter, which was first published by CNN and confirmed by the Post.
“Let me be clear: Should any harm befall any suspected named whistleblower or their family, the blame will rest squarely with your client,” said the letter, addressed to Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, and copied to congressional leaders.
The person named in Donald Trump Jr.’s tweets — as well as in the articles he amplified — did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the president’s elder son, when asked by the Post about Donald Trump Jr.’s posts, cited his several tweets on the subject, including one noting previous online conversation about the whistleblower’s supposed name and expressing surprise about the controversy on Wednesday. “Are they going to pretend that his name hasn’t been in the public domain for weeks now?” the spokesman, Andrew Surabian, asked.
In a statement shortly after Donald 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.”
The statement by Mr. Bakaj and Mark S. Zaid said that “publication or promotion of a name shows the desperation to deflect from the substance of the whistleblower complaint. It will not relieve the president of the need to address the substantive allegations, all of which have been substantially proven to be true.”
At the same time, Donald Trump Jr. has rallied behind Mr. Paul after the senator, addressing a packed arena in Lexington, claimed Monday night that he knows the identity of the whistleblower — and then delivered a pointed message to the media.
“Do your job and print his name!” the senator yelled, prompting the crowd to chant raucously, “Do your job!”
“Awesome!!!” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “@RandPaul bringing the heat. He’s 100% right and I’m glad he has the guts to say it. We need more guys like Rand.”
But Mr. Paul’s comments drew intense criticism from many who accused him of putting the anonymous U.S. intelligence officer in danger, a firestorm that turned the senator’s name into a top trending term on Twitter with more than 63,000 mentions.
“A member of Congress who calls for the identity of any lawful whistleblower to be publicly revealed against their wishes disgraces the office they hold and betrays the interests of the Constitution and the American people,” Mr. Zaid told the Post in an emailed statement Monday night.
Far-right Internet personalities with ties to the president have labored to give credence to claims about the whistleblower’s identity, which has been the subject of speculation on the web since the first days after details of the complaint became public.
Jack Posobiec ― a Trump supporter who pushed the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that prominent Democratic politicians were involved in a child sex abuse ring and is now a correspondent for the conservative One America News Network — tweeted the name of the CIA officer on Oct. 3, two weeks after elements of the whistleblower’s complaint became public.
Mr. Posobiec said his initial mention of the CIA officer’s name, suggesting it “sounds like” that person was the whistleblower, was an educated guess based on what he’d read in a New York Times article and background Mr. Posobiec already knew about several people suspected of being the whistleblower.
The Times article, published on Sept. 26, carried the headline, “WhistleBlower Is a C.I.A. Officer Who Was Detailed to the White House.”
“You could pretty much read between the lines,” Mr. Posobiec said.
His initial reference drew some immediate attention. But Mr. Posobiec’s reach paled next to the torrent that came when other accounts, including that of conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, mentioned the same name on Twitter. One account, @GregRubini, tweeted the same CIA officer’s name more than 20 times.
The push on Twitter intensified last week, when an article appeared on RealClearInvestigations, which is backed by foundations associated with conservative causes, including the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
The article, by the conservative author Paul Sperry, whose books include “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington,” made a detailed argument that the individual was the whistleblower.