President Donald Trump dismissed concerns Wednesday, including from some GOP lawmakers, about protecting the confidentiality of a whistleblower.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump dismissed concerns Wednesday – including from some GOP lawmakers – about shielding a whistleblower at the center of allegations that he pressured Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.
Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the unnamed person, who filed an Aug. 12 complaint about the president's phone call with Ukraine's president, said"a whistleblower should be protected if the whistleblower's legitimate." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who launched an impeachment inquiry of Trump last week, has said she was alarmed at the whistleblower’s report and a summary of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that has been made public. On the call, Trump repeatedly pressed Zelensky to investigate Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunner, and his son, Hunter, who once had business interests in Ukraine. During the time of the conversation, the White House was holding up a military aid package Congress had approved for Ukraine. The whistleblower has accused Trump of abusing the power of his office to try to discredit a political rival. Trump has said there was nothing improper about the phone call and has insisted there was no"quid pro quo" over the military aid. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a co-founder of the Senate Whistleblower Caucus, said on Tuesday that the whistleblower deserves to be heard and protected. “We should always work to respect whistleblowers’ requests for confidentiality,” Grassley said. Trump also renewed his attacks on House Democrats, including Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. and the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Trump said Schiff couldn't carry Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's"blank strap," apparently a reference to a"jockstrap." Earlier, Trump blasted a tweet storm minutes after a Democratic news conference, condemning impeachment as an attempt to force him from office that will damage the country. Trump challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's stated desire to work on trade and drug prices, saying Democrats are obsessed with impeachment.Story continuesResponse: Trump sets Twitter record as White House fights off impeachment inquiryPelosi is"incapable" of working on other issues, the president wrote. "It is just camouflage for trying to win an election through impeachment. The Do Nothing Democrats are stuck in mud!" In a tweet that preceded the meeting with the president of Finland, Trump also dropped a barnyard epithet in condemning the impeachment drive. The president described Democrats as wasting their time on"bullshit" despite his election in 2016. House Democrats have questioned the president’s past attacks on the whistleblower. “I hope that you understand, and I suspect that you do, the seriousness of the president of the United States saying he wants to interview that person,” Pelosi said earlier Wednesday. “The president probably doesn’t realize how dangerous his statements are when he says he wants to expose who the whistleblower is and those who may have given the whistleblower that information.”This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump: 'Don't care' about GOP concerns over whistleblower
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