Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Tuesday he will probably disclose the name of the whistleblower whose complaint prompted House Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
He told reporters Tuesday evening that he “probably will” disclose the whistleblower’s name, according to reports.
“I’m more than willing to, and I probably will at some point,” he said, according to the Hill. “There is no law preventing anybody from saying the name.”
During a rally in Kentucky on Monday night, he called on the media who know his name to “do your job and print his name.”
The New York Times first identified the whistleblower as a male who works as a CIA analyst. RealClearInvestigations was the first media outlet to report that it is likely CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella.
Ciaramella joined the National Security Council in 2015 and worked with former Vice President Joe Biden. He stayed on at the NSC until 2017, when he was suspected of leaks to the media. He reportedly returned to his home agency.
Paul said during the rally on Monday:
We also now know the name of the whistleblower. The whistleblower needs to come forward as a material witness because he worked for Joe Biden at the same time Hunter Biden was getting money from corrupt oligarchs.
He told CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux during a brief interview on Tuesday that it is not illegal to identify a whistleblower and that whistleblower laws only prevent the government from identifying a whistleblower.
“The whistleblower statute protects the whistleblower from having his name revealed by the inspector general. Even the New York Times admits that no one else is under any legal obligation,” he said.
Paul went on to say:
The whistleblower is actually a material witness completely separate from being the whistleblower because he worked for Joe Biden. He worked for Joe Biden at the same time Hunter Biden was receiving $50,000 a month.
So the investigation into the corruption of Hunter Biden involves this whistleblower because he was there at the time. Did he bring up the conflict of interest? Was there discussion of this? What was his involvement with the relationship between Joe Biden and the prosecutors? There’s a lot of questions the whistleblower needs to answer.
“[The whistleblower] might have traveled with Joe Biden to Ukraine for all we know. We should look at his writings. We should know all of this stuff to see whether or not he has any intersection with Burisma and with Hunter Biden,” said Paul.
Asked if he had evidence for any of these suppositions, Paul said, “We don’t know unless we ask.”
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