I didn’t read it all but I got quite a ways through it. What I didn’t see and would like to know is who has the authority to change the whistleblower statute?
Congress. Congress writess all statutes (laws). Regulations are composed by administrative agencies.
This is not the only whistleblower statute. This one is aimed at the intelligence community. The "whistleblower protection" (for real whistleblowers) is different for the IC than for say the IRS or DoD. IC has --less-- protection.
This person doesn't get any protection. Laundering a leak through the whistleblower mechanism as ICIG Atkinson did, does not immunize a leaker.
See too 5 USC 2302(b)(8).
Only the House, the Senate, with the signature of the President on the resulting Bill. . . But someone changed the IC IG’s reporting form sometime in August, but only posted online for use in the last half of September. That’s mighty convenient when you can see the time line for “urgent” matters in the law I just posted. 14 days for the Inspector General to investigate the matter AFTER he receives the complaint before he has to pass it on to the Director of National Intelligence for his decision on what to do with it. The DNI then has seven days before he spike it or must notify Congress. . . That’s a 20 day time frame, but the IG’s letter to the congressional committees was dated on August 12, 2019, when the phone call occurred on July 25th. . . Just 18 days prior to the letter being sent to the committees.
When was the new reporting form, dated August 2019, but only published on the DNI’s website for use in late September, altered to allow the use of third-hand and hearsay information instead of prohibiting it as the previous form did? The previous form also said that use of such prohibited information would preclude consideration by the IG of the report.
That previous form could NOT have been filed with the IG in July... as the previous form with hearsay and third-party prohibitions was still the form required to be used. So exactly when did all this take place??? When was the new form made available to the complainant when it was not made available to the new DNI John Ratcliffe, who only took office in mid-August, after the 15th? DNI Dan Coats announced his resignation on July 29th. Who approved the new form, if anyone ever did? It doesn’t have the correct government date format (ddmmyy) instead showing “August 2019”, and lacks even a required government form number on it. Odd, don’t you think? Sounds rushed. Do you smell dead fish?
But that law applying a 20 day time limitation for reporting urgent matters to the Congressional oversight committees is FOR INTERNAL INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY EMPLOYEES or CONTRACTOR wrong doing only. This so-called “urgent intelligence matter,” which is constrained by statutory definition, did not meet those criteria, and the report went outside intelligence community activities which raised issues outside the boundaries of the intelligence community which required legal rulings from DOJ Legal Counsel about whether those laws relating to the intelligence community urgent reporting even applied.
The career lawyers in the DOJ determined that law did not apply at all because the subject of the hearsay evidence was NOT A MEMBER of any intelligence agency subject whose activities were not subject to being under the authority or jurisdiction of the DNI or IC IG, or to having his activities, behavior, or conversations with anyone, reported by any Intelligence Community member, as he was not a member of the Intelligence Community and certainly not subject to their statutory jurisdiction.
Ergo, the career legal counsel in the DOJ determined the entire topic was not within the jurisdiction of the Inspector General or even the DNI. The elected officials and politically appointed officials in the White House, or similar positions in Congress are not under the jurisdiction of law cited above, as much as the Democrats want it to apply to the President.
You can search through the statute exhaustively and you will find it mentioning ONLY the Intelligence Community members, employees, and contractors and their employees. They also determined that the matter was a matter of political policy, statutorily prohibited from such a report in the law itself.
Someone, at some undated time in August, after the event, changed the regulations and the IC IG’s form (apparently without going through appropriate channels and required public comment) for reporting urgent matters to allow what before was not allowed, i.e. specifically knowing only from first hand knowledge to permitting suspecting from hearsay and third hand rumors. This had to have been deliberate to make the report even acceptable, much less credible. Obviously coordinated shenanigans at work.
From the tenor of the “whistleblower’s” reporting, it looks to me as if the whistleblower arrogated to himself the role of the Inspector General, taking upon himself the task of investigation, interrogating members of the White House staff, asking questions he should have no business asking, gathering information he had no right to know, and collection data he had no business gathering to compile. He, from what I can tell, had no authority to do what he did in the course of collecting information under color of his connections with the CIA, if that is what agency he works for. The most a whistleblower is supposed to do is report what they saw or heard, not take it upon themselves to become Elliot Ness, no matter what level of investigative training they may have. It’s not their job. By doing what he did, he poisons the pool.
Not just that but where was the GOP when they were doing this?