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Five Whistleblowers on What It Takes to Risk It All

The impeachment of Donald Trump began with a whistleblower. What kind of person is willing to lose everything to reveal the truth?

Elizabeth Svoboda
GEN
12 min readJan 21, 2020

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Image: Wildpixel/Getty Images

OnOn August 12, 2019, an unnamed whistleblower submitted a nine-page letter to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The letter-writer, a Trump administration insider, described a now-infamous phone call in which President Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden. This quid pro quo struck at the heart of Trump’s presidency. It spurred weeks of investigations that have led here, to Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

While the Ukraine whistleblower has so far chosen to remain anonymous, others who’ve been in a similar position — putting their lives on hold to expose corruption — understand what the inside of that crucible is like. GEN spoke with five whistleblowers about how it felt to weigh commitment to their values against their own solvency, status, and well-being. Telling the truth upended not just their everyday lives, but often their faith that institutions could live up to their founding principles.

These whistleblowers, from a variety of professional backgrounds, showed a resolute willingness to do what most of us…

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Published in GEN

A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Elizabeth Svoboda
Elizabeth Svoboda

Written by Elizabeth Svoboda

Science writer. Author of What Makes a Hero? (Penguin Random House) and The Life Heroic (Zest Books).

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