On the recordJanuary 30, 2020
I send a question to the desk for the House managers. The CHIEF JUSTICE. Thank you. The question from Senator Hirono is for the House managers: Can you talk about what has happened to whistleblowers when they have been outed against their will? What are the consequences of revealing their identity, particularly when we have a President who has tried to bully and threaten impeachment witnesses? Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Senator, I don't know that we can give you examples of whistleblowers who were the subject of retaliation, although I have no doubt that there are many. We can seek by the latter part of this evening to get a list of some of the whistleblowers that have confronted retaliation. But I--this does give me an opportunity to speak a little more--in a more fulsome way about a point I made earlier about the unique importance of whistleblowers in the intelligence community. Our area of intelligence is unique in this respect. If you are a whistleblower who wants to blow the whistle on a fraudulent contract in a transportation project, you can go public. If you are blowing the whistle on misconduct in the area of housing, you can go public. You can have a press conference, and you can declare the wrongdoing that you have seen. If you are a whistleblower in the intelligence community, however, you cannot go public. You have no recourse to bring to the public's attention wrongdoing, except one of really two vehicles.…
