Oversight
Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Shows Why Leaks Are Vital to Democracy
Yet lawmakers of both stripes demonize people who share information with the press
Donald Trump is now closer than ever to being impeached by the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has finally opened the door to bringing charges after Trump was caught pressuring a foreign country to help him win the 2020 election and trying to stifle a whistleblower complaint.
And if impeachment indeed happens, we’ll have not only that whistleblower to thank, but also leaks to the press.
As everyone now knows — and has been confirmed by a rough transcript released by the White House itself — Trump tried to push Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Trump even offered up the Justice Department’s services to Zelenskiy in any potential criminal investigation he wished to conduct into the younger Biden.
Up until a week ago, though, the public and Congress weren’t aware of any of these facts. We knew only that an unnamed intelligence official had filed a Trump-related complaint with the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the DNI had refused to hand over the whistleblower report to Congress, despite being required to…
