There’s a sinister reason Democrats don’t want you to know whistleblower’s name

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Ten days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, lawyer Mark Zaid declared on Twitter, “#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately.” Zaid now represents the whistleblower.

Understandably, Democrats now say the whistleblower does not matter. There are other first hand accounts. There are people who listened in on the call. There are people the president talked to.

Except the Democrats initially said they wanted to talk to the whistleblower. They coordinated with the whistleblower before the whistleblower blew his whistle. If reports of his identity are true, he is a partisan progressive activist.

We are at this point because of a whistleblower who coordinated in advance with the Democrats. He is now paired with a lawyer who two years ago advocated a coup. The American people deserve to see this person in public and he deserves to be grilled on the reason for his complaint — did he really feel aggrieved or did he just want to take down the president?

I dare say the reason the Democrats who were so desperate to talk to him now don’t want to is that they know he will come across as hyper-partisan and that will undermine their efforts.

Here is the bottom line for me. For three years, Trump supporters have insisted there was a deep state conspiracy to take down the president. I dismissed them and the press ridiculed them. Now various media outlets from The New York Times to MSNBC are celebrating the deep state attack on President Trump. They are openly laughing about it.

It is a dangerous, dangerous precedent for a CIA employee embedded in the White House to work with Democrats and others to end a presidency that operative does not like — no matter the reason. It is a dangerous thing to let career bureaucrats get it in their head that they can sabotage a presidency.

There should be every disincentive possible for a career civil servant to exercise his judgment against the presidency, even if he is ultimately right. There are layers upon layers of appointees under the president, including at least one willing to write anonymously in The New York Times. But none of these came forward to complain. There were chains of command the whistleblower could have used to express his concern. But he wanted to take down the presidency instead.

A careerist should be brave enough to put himself out there and Congress should demand it as a direct disincentive on whistleblowing against the president. The president, regardless of who he or she is, must be able to trust advice given and interactions. This whistleblower fundamentally undermines all of that.

One can credible argue that the whistleblower did the right thing. I would argue he did not. Instead, he cast doubt on the president’s ability to work with the intelligence community and, along with Anonymous, made us less safe as a nation in his partisan zeal to take out the president. His friends in the media have further helped undermine half the nation’s trust in our intelligence community and bureaucracy. This is damage people will hand wave away, but they should not.

I know the loudest voices right now wish the President impeached and so the wagons must be circled around the whistleblower. I acknowledge the merits of their arguments. Unfortunately, we cannot settle this at the ballot box. It must be settled now to scratch an itch by some. After all, in the whistleblower’s attorney’s words, the coup has started.

Erick Erickson hosts “The Erick Erickson Show,“ which is broadcast across Georgia.