Attorneys for the Ukraine whistleblower said the whistleblower’s entire government career has been spent in apolitical roles.
A letter pushing back on claims the whistleblower is politically biased was written by Andrew Bakaj and Mark Zaid, national security lawyers who have represented numerous whistleblowers. They now represent at least two whistleblowers in the Ukraine saga.
“In light of the ongoing efforts to mischaracterize whistleblower #1’s alleged ‘bias’ in order to detract from the substance of the complaint, we will attempt to clarify some facts,” Bakaj and Zaid said.
Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson wrote in August the whistleblower displayed “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate” but nevertheless found that the whistleblower “appeared credible” and determined that the whistleblower’s allegations were an “urgent concern.”
And the Washington Examiner reported this week that “under questioning from Republicans during last Friday’s impeachment inquiry interview with Atkinson, the inspector general revealed that the whistleblower’s possible bias was not that he was simply a registered Democrat.” According to multiple sources, the bias included the fact that the whistleblower “had a significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates currently vying to challenge President Trump in next year’s election.”
The whistleblower attorneys on Wednesday said that their client “has never worked for or advised a political candidate, campaign, or party” and has spent their career in civil servant positions in the executive branch. The lawyers said that, through these roles, the whistleblower “has come into contact with presidential candidates from both parties in their roles as elected officials — not as candidates.”
Prior to filing their complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general, the whistleblower reached out to a staff member on the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee, which is led by Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Schiff’s office said that the whistleblower revealed only general details about the allegations to the staff member, who then passed that info along to Schiff, and that Schiff’s office recommended that the whistleblower obtain legal counsel and file a formal complaint. Schiff has come under fire for not revealing this information to Republican members of the committee or to the public, even as he misled about his contact with the whistleblower on television.
The whistleblower’s attorneys have insisted that their client followed all the proper rules and procedures.
“The whistleblower is not the story,” Bakaj and Zaid wrote. “To date, virtually every substantive allegation has been confirmed by other sources. For that reason the identity of the whistleblower is irrelevant.”
The whistleblower’s complaint stems from a July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked for a “favor” from Ukraine in investigating a conspiracy theory and to look into any Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.
Bakaj and Zaid have been critical of Trump in the past, especially in the national security and intelligence arenas, and Bakaj has come under fire from Republicans for his time spent as an intern for Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton nearly two decades ago.
Zaid has repeatedly disputed they are motivated by politics, stating that “partisans are trying to smear the legal team as some liberal opposition” and claiming that “we are anything but that.” Zaid pointed to the fact that in the past he had represented the conservative Daily Caller in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit related to Hillary Clinton’s email server as well as helped six whistleblowers during the Benghazi scandal.
