White House attack on Vindman exemplifies why we have whistleblower protections

While Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the director for European Affairs for the National Security Council, publicly testified to the House Intelligence Committee, the official White House Twitter account attacked his credibility, pulling a quotation out of context from the closed-door testimony of Vindman’s boss, Tim Morrison.

As the sole head of the executive branch, President Trump has the authority to hire and fire members of the NSC for any reason. But it’s hardly politically expedient to publicly bully his own subordinate as retaliation for his testimony. If anything, the White House tweet exemplifies why whistleblower protections are necessary.

In filing an official report rather than leaking to the media, the whistleblower himself did the right thing. If House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff hadn’t teased the report publicly, and the White House had relented more quickly, the report could have remained a private affair, one that didn’t threaten our relationship with foreign leaders and one that didn’t turn into a partisan circus. In a vacuum, whistleblower protections work and disincentivize leaking to the media.

The White House tweet just goes to show the ugliness of Trump’s retaliation and why whistleblowers are protected in the first place. Both Vindman and Morrison warned the White House about the Ukraine aid issue weeks prior to a single member of the public learning about it, and yet Vindman’s been attacked with a quotation taken out of context.

If Trump wants to fire Vindman, he can, and he should. But to publicly retaliate against him, threatening his employment in the hopes of scaring other potential witnesses out of speaking, is political malpractice. It goes to show why the White House has such severe brain drain. Leak to the media, and journalists will protect you. But follow the proper course of addressing concerns internally, and the White House will go to war with you in public.