The whistleblower who filed a complaint against President Trump that now forms the center of an impeachment inquiry against him is a registered Democrat, according to a report from CNN.
That fact was reported by inspector general for the intelligence community Michael Atkinson as an “arguable political bias on the part” of the whistleblower.
However, Atkinson also wrote in a report on the whistleblower that “such evidence did not change my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern ‘appears credible.'”
2/ The attorney for the whistleblower declined to comment.
The IG said "such evidence did not change my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern 'appears credible' particularly given the other information the ICIG obtained during its preliminary review."
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 3, 2019
The as-yet unidentified whistleblower was described by the New York Times as a CIA analyst who worked at the White House.
The complaint alleges the White House went to unusual lengths to secure the transcript of a phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The whistleblower said he had received information from those with firsthand knowledge of the conversation that Trump may have committed an abuse of power.
Trump released the transcript of the call on September 25, in which he said:
There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution [of Viktor Shokin] and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. It sounds horrible to me.
A week before the conversation Trump had ordered a halt to a $391 million military-aid package to Ukraine, drawing accusations that he used the aid as leverage to pressure Zelensky to investigate a political rival.
House Democrats announced last week that they would begin an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s handling of the situation. Trump has so far denounced the allegations as a “hoax” and today reiterated his assertion that Zelensky should investigate the Bidens and called on China to look into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in that country as well.