Raise your hand if you saw this coming?
After days of impeachment fever and breathless hot takes about Trump being taken down by a non-scandal involving a whistle-blower and a call to Ukraine, we are starting to get more information about just who is involved in this. You’d be completely not shocked to learn that the whistle-blower has retained the services of a lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, not as a disconnected lawyer, but on their political staffs.
And stick around, because it gets even worse.
Per The Federalist.
The anonymous person who filed a formal, uncorroborated complaint against President Donald Trump for allegedly asking a foreign leader to investigate corruption related to Joe Biden now has a legal team that includes a Democratic operative who worked for Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).Andrew Bakaj, now a managing partner at the Compass Rose Legal Group, interned for Schumer in the spring of 2001 and for Clinton in the fall of the same year, according to Bakaj’s LinkedIn page. More recently, Bakaj has worked as an official in the CIA and Pentagon and specializes in whistleblower and security clearances in his legal practice.
You know what I wouldn’t do if I wanted my complaint to be taken seriously and not considered partisan? I wouldn’t go hire a former staffer for Hillary Rodham Clinton who also worked within the agencies in question. That seems like a bit of a conflict, especially when the entire basis of impeachment is presupposed on the condition of the unbiased nature of the whistle-blower.
Oh, but it doesn’t end there. Here’s the really good stuff.
The anonymous U.S. intelligence official accusing President Trump of improperly pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is represented by two lawyers who run a group that offers financial help to fired whistleblowers.Whistleblower Aid was launched in September 2017 — eight months after Trump’s inauguration — with an advertising blitz that involved mobile billboards being driven close to the White House, Congress, outside the Pentagon, and around the headquarters of the CIA and National Security Agency.The group’s pledge of support, in addition to free legal representation including rent and mortgage assistance, media coaching, and doctor’s bills and counseling, is controversial among lawyers. Critics say it violates attorney ethics.
Yes, you read that right. This lawyer and his group formed an organization that pays anti-Trump “whistle-blowers” to come forward and lodge complaints. Further, they offer free legal representation and a myriad of other payments, including mortgage assistance for some reason.
Now, I’m no legal expert, but that seems pretty low brow and unethical to me. It seems like the kind of situation that would bring partisan actors out of the woodwork in order to benefit from the situation. Especially when the law will protect their anonymity the entire way.
This lawyer himself is anything but an unbiased observer.
The more that comes out, the more political this looks. Let’s say the whistle-blower complaint is released. By what rational is it to even be believed? It’s almost certainly going to be baseless conjecture given what we have already heard. We know he/she has mislead everyone on their knowledge of the Ukraine call, with a report coming out that they never even heard the call for themselves.
Meanwhile, Democrats are prancing around trumpeting impeachment at the poker table while holding a pair of twos. This isn’t going to end well for them. I say bring it on though.