President Trump and his advisers are frantically searching for the identity of the whistleblower who exposed Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president and those in the White House who spoke to him.
Trump demanded the identities of the sources as Democrats clamored for Trump’s impeachment for allegedly inducing Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right?”
Among sources close to the White House staff, there was a clear consensus that at least one of the sources likely worked at the National Security Council, given context clues in an Aug. 12 whistleblower complaint released Thursday.
In the complaint, the person who reported the call to the inspector general of the intelligence community said they acquired information from “multiple White House officials” and “more than half a dozen U.S. officials.”
The document specifically alleges a cover-up of the July 25 call’s transcript, with the document transferred to a less widely accessible platform in what the whistleblower saw as an effort to conceal its content.
Specific names are circulating as suspects for both the whistleblower and the sources, though the Washington Examiner is not printing the names because the officials’ responsibility cannot be proven.
Recent turnover at the highest levels of the National Security Council, with John Bolton ousted, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with Director Dan Coats and his deputy Sue Gordon resigning, has fueled speculation about the intersection of palace intrigue and the whistleblowing.
The New York Times reported Thursday afternoon that the whistleblower, who lacked direct knowledge of the call and its aftermath, was a CIA officer detailed to the White House but who has since returned to the CIA. The Times didn’t name the person.
Other suspects had floated among insiders, including a former official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said to have been disgruntled about an investigation into their conduct.
A Bolton ally at the National Security Council, meanwhile, has been discussed by insiders as a suspected source of information for the whistleblower. But he “would NEVER do this,” countered a former senior administration official, who questioned whether the individual would have access to such information.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has said that the whistleblower has expressed interest in testifying, potentially ending the guessing game as to their identity.
But inside the White House, rumors and fear are likely to reign, with Trump furious after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blessed an official impeachment inquiry, noting the timing of the call and Trump’s decision to delay foreign aid to Ukraine.
“It wouldn’t be the first time” that there was a mole hunt inside the White House, said a former official.
