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Following Trip, Nancy Pelosi Offers Support To Taiwan Despite Threats, Criticism

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Following a trip to Taiwan that made her the first U.S. Speaker to visit the country in more than 25 years, Nancy Pelosi voiced her and her delegation’s continued support despite the trip heightening tensions between China and the U.S.

While Pelosi didn’t state the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily, it’s “committed to the security of Taiwan, in order to have Taiwan be able to most effectively defend themselves.” Pelosi also brushed off threats from Beijing, explaining they will not stand in the way of people visiting the self-governing nation.

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Pelosi arrived in Taiwan’s capital of Taipei late Tuesday and was greeted by Taiwan’s foreign minister, amongst other Taiwan and American officials. Among Pelosi’s delegation include Reps. Gregory Meeks, Andy Kim, Mark Takano, and Raja Krishnamoorthi.

Meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, Pelosi explained America’s solidarity with Taiwain is more important than ever as the world faces a choice “between democracy and autocracy.”

“America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.”

While members of Congress have visited Taiwan in recent years, Pelosi’s high standing in the government has added further fuel to a conflict centered around China’s belief it controls Taiwan as its territory while discouraging Taiwanese foreign relations with other countries.

Pelosi went deeper into China’s grip on Tawainese global relations. “Sadly, Taiwan has been prevented from participating in global meetings, most recently the World Health Organization, because of objections by the Chinese Communist Party,” she stated.

In response to Pelosi’s visit, China announced military exercises around the island and in Taiwan waters that sit 12 miles from the shore. Not only will they disrupt supply and airplane routes, but some of those exercises are also set to include live fire, which experts explained can sometimes be seen as an act of war.

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The People’s Liberation Army air force flew 21 airplanes toward Taiwan the night of Pelosi’s arrival, while an additional 27 crafts were flown Wednesday night. “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai stated in regards to Bejing’s intimidation.

“We will firmly uphold our nation’s sovereignty and continue to hold the line of defense for democracy.”

Despite Pelosi’s expressed commitment, the U.S. will continue to abide by the long-standing “one-China policy,” which maintains that Taiwan is a part of China. However, the policy also allows unofficial relations with Taipei.

Though having cautioned against the notable visit, the Biden Administration stated Pelosi’s trip — and Tawainese comments — are consistent with U.S. policies, while China will now be watched carefully after Pelosi’s visit.

For the U.S., the China-Taiwan tensions are just one of several continuing global conflicts the country finds itself in the heart of. Russia’s defense ministry claimed the U.S. is “directly involved” in the Ukraine conflict due to American spies coordinating and approving Ukraine missile strikes.

Following stops at Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan, Pelosi then flew to a South Korean military base Wednesday before meeting with officials and leaders in Seoul. She plans to then visit Japan as part of her Indo-Pacific region trip that is focusing on the “mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance” of the region.

Mother And Son Arrested For Theft of Laptop During Capitol Riots

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The FBI has arrested Watertown, New York residents Maryann Mooney-Rondon, 55, and her son, Rafael Rondon, 23, for their connections in the theft of a laptop during the Capital attack on Jan. 6.

A press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York stated that the pair appeared in federal court Friday in Syracuse, New York, and were released pending further proceedings.

In addition to theft of government property, the pair also face other charges in regards to the Capitol riot. These include entering and remaining in a restricted Capitol building or certain rooms, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of an official proceeding.

Only the obstruction of an official proceeding is classified as a felony, with the others being misdemeanors.

The younger Rondon also faces charges for an unregistered sawed-off shotgun, of which a maximum sentence carries up to 10 years of prison time and a fine of $250,000.

According to the Associated Press, while the pair weren’t the ones to have physically stolen the laptop, Mooney-Rondon had assisted in the theft by providing her gloves or a scarf to the perpetrator of the laptop, so as to not leave any fingerprints.

“He asked, he said, give me – I don’t know if it was gloves or a scarf I was wearing – and like I said he scared me,” the documents quotes her [Mooney-Rodon] as saying.

Rodon then claimed to FBI agents that he assisted the man in sliding the laptop into his backpack with the gloves or scarf, which the young man said was “probably stupid” of him. The two then went into the Senate gallery, and proceeded to leave after seeing it was flooded with protesters.

The man that Mooney-Rodon and Rodon assisted has not yet been identified.

Numerous media outlets had reported that the laptop belonged to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. While the laptop was taken from Pelosi’s conference room, these reports were false as it was later clarified that the laptop did not belong to Pelosi. The only purpose of the staff-owned laptop was for presentations.

Pelosi’s actual laptop was claimed to be stolen by 22-year-old Harrisburg, Pennsylvania resident Riley Williams. Williams was arrested two weeks following the riot after boasting of stealing the laptop on social media and reportedly planning on selling it to Russian security services.

However, Pelosi’s laptop was not found in Williams’ possession, and it is currently unknown if it was ever recovered by the FBI.

The FBI’s search for Mooney-Rodon and her son created quite a stir for a number of parties involved. As the Associated Press notes, the FBI had raided the business of Paul and Marilyn Hueper in Homer, Alaska back in April, believing they were the ones who had assisted in the laptop theft.

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The Huepers had been in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 for the Trump rally that preceded the attack, but did not partake in the breaching of the Capitol. The raid was a case of mistaken identity as the women involved had similar features in photos during that time, such as coats and hairstyles.

Speaking to the Associated Press, Hueper said that while it’s a relief this ordeal is over, she’s concerned about the power the FBI holds that lets them disturb innocent people due to their “poor investigative skills and aggressive tactics,” while also not showing concern for the messy trail they leave behind.

In the 10 months since the capitol riot that was labeled by FBI Director Christopher Wray as “domestic terrorism,” over 668 people have been arrested on countless charges similar to the ones the Mooney-Rodon family is facing.

However, despite the takeover being extremely documented, many violators still have yet to be identified by law enforcement.

Washington DC

McConnell Says He Has Votes to Start Impeachment Trial Without Witnesses

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Although Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues to withhold the articles of impeachment from the Senate with no indication of when she plans to transfer them to the Republican-controlled half of Congress, the outlines of how the trial will proceed are beginning to take shape as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told Republican colleagues that he has the votes to begin the trial with no guarantee that witnesses will be called. Democrats believe that their case against the president is already ironclad, but that calling additional witnesses like former national security advisor John Bolton and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney will further bolster their case and convince the American public of the president’s wrongdoing.

Republicans, on the other hand, have not presented a defense of the president’s conduct on the merits of the case but instead have tried to shift attention to the president’s political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, alleging that the younger Biden’s conduct in Ukraine as a member of the board of an oil company constituted impropriety as his father was Vice President at the time. Accordingly, McConnell and Senate Republicans have announced their intention to work with the White House to ensure that the political damage the trial inflicts on Trump’s presidency is minimized. As such, Republicans are pushing for a rapid trial involving no witnesses and documents, consisting only of a presentation from the impeachment managers selected by the House and a defense from the president’s legal team followed by a vote which is all but certain to result in an acquittal, giving the president ammunition in his claim that he is being unfairly prosecuted by Democrats.

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McConnell has argued that the Senate trial should begin in accordance with the rules that governed the 1999 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, which did not guarantee the presence of documents or witnesses but allowed senators to vote to call witnesses, who appeared virtually via videotape, as the trial proceeded. As Republicans hold a majority in the Senate and are fairly united in their opposition to the impeachment of Donald Trump, it is unlikely that they will decide during the trial to call witnesses like Bolton and Mulvaney who have firsthand knowledge of the scandal that led to the president’s impeachment, though they may push to call witnesses like Joe and Hunter Biden to testify about the unrelated, manufactured conspiracy theory that alleges without evidence misconduct on the part of Democrats.

If history is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before the full details of the administration’s conduct in connection with the scandal about Ukraine are revealed to all

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has accused McConnell and the Republicans of engaging in a cover-up by refusing to hear from Bolton and Mulvaney, among others, particularly given the magnitude of the evidence that has already been uncovered by House investigators despite the White House’s near-total obstruction, which has understandably raised additional questions about the administration’s response to the president’s request of Ukrainian President Zelensky for assistance in his domestic political campaign.

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Though the likelihood of the presence of witnesses at the president’s trial decreases by the day, John Bolton has complicated the process by saying he’d be willing to testify if he receives a subpoena from the Senate, despite his prior refusal to comply with a House subpoena on the basis of his claim that that his conflicting orders from Congress and the executive branch constituted a critical separation-of-powers issue that had to be resolved by the courts.

Political observers believe that Bolton’s announcement is not sincere, but instead strategic, as the former White House national security advisor is well within his rights to discuss what he knows about the president’s conduct in a public forum, and in fact may do so in a book that he is planning to sell. That being said, pundits disagree over the end-game of Bolton’s political strategy, which remains unclear to everyone except him and his legal team. In any event, if history is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before the full details of the administration’s conduct in connection with the scandal about Ukraine are revealed to all, whether or not witnesses are called during the forthcoming trial. 

Capitol Building

US Senators Clash Over Impeachment Trial Procedures

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Right after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi surprised pundits everywhere by making a strategic move no one saw coming: instead of immediately deciding upon impeachment managers to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, she decided to withhold the transmission of articles as leverage to coerce Senate Republicans to vote for what she considers to be a fair trial, which includes the calling of witnesses and the production of documents. Currently, Congress is in recess for the holidays, but negotiations surrounding the trial proceed nevertheless, even as lawmakers visit their families and constituents at their homes. 

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called upon four Republicans to vote in favor of allowing documents and witnesses during the trial, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell starkly opposes. As the procedures for the trial will be determined by 51 votes, and Schumer already has all 47 Democratic Senators onboard, only four Republicans would have to defy McConnell to ensure a trial with witnesses and documents. Given the fact that the president himself has said that he’d like to see witnesses during the trial, and almost 2 in 3 Republicans also want top Trump aides to testify at the Senate trial, Schumer and the Democrats hope that pressure from constituents will be enough to convince the necessary four Republican senators to side with Democrats on this matter.

Given the dramatic and historic nature of this impeachment, people around the world are paying very close attention to the U.S. Congress during these critical next few weeks, as the rules of the trial will have to be determined soon for it to begin early next year as intended. Accordingly, U.S. senators, who ultimately will shortly decide whether the president is fit to remain in office for the rest of his first term, are using the media to amplify their message either for or against a fair trial as they try to build their cases. Today, The New York Times published an opinion piece written by Patrick Leahy, a Democratic senator from Vermont, who wrote of the historic implications of the Senate’s upcoming decision, as this impeachment trial, no matter how it ends up proceeding, will set precedent for future impeachments and forever define Congress’s role in checking the misconduct of a duly elected president.

The actions the Senate takes over the next several weeks will at least in part outline the shape of future impeachments and more clearly define the nature of Congress’s power to check the executive branch.

In the piece, Leahy argues that the outcome of the upcoming trial will determine the validity of the Senate itself, and more broadly the importance of truth in our government. Leahy, who has served as a juror on six impeachment trials of five judges and one president, notes that senators must swear an oath to carry out “impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,” and fears that the Senate will shortly abandon the idea of taking this oath seriously. This is because several Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, have already said they’ve made up their minds and that they don’t expect to act as fair jurors during the trial.

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Impeachment trials are wholly separate from other types of trials, as they are conducted in the Senate, which briefly operates as a court of law during the proceedings. The Senate has the sole responsibility of setting the rules of its trial, and as the Senate is characterized by the presence of partisan politicians who are unflinchingly loyal to the president, Democrats fear that the trial will end up being fundamentally corrupt. Already, McConnell, who will act as one of 100 jurors, has pledged that “there will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this,” creating a rare case of a trial in which the jurors collaborate with the defendant to ensure the outcome favored by the defendant. Presidential impeachments are rare in American history, and as such there exists little precedent for how they should be carried out; as such, the actions the Senate takes over the next several weeks will at least in part outline the shape of future impeachments and more clearly define the nature of Congress’s power to check the executive branch.

Impeachment

Nancy Pelosi Delays Sending Articles Of Impeachment To Senate Following House Vote

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Donald Trump has officially become the third President of the United States to be impeached following the House vote approving the articles of impeachment this past Wednesday (December 18th). While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Trump will be fully removed from office, it still is being recognized as a historic day. 

Now, the vote is up to the Republican-controlled Senate on whether or not Trump will remain in office for the rest of his term. However, they are facing some delays after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that she would not commit to sending the articles of impeachment against the president to the Senate. 

“That would have been our intention, but we’ll see what happens over there,” Pelosi said at a post-impeachment news conference when asked about the articles.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

The withholding comes as a response to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s rejection of Senate Leader Chuck Schumer’s request to allow four witnesses who work, or formerly worked,  as Trump’s officials to testify as witnesses at the Senate’s impeachment trial. Two of the witnesses include Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton and the acting White House Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney. Both of these witnesses were working closely with Trump around the time of the phone call to the Ukrainian President, making their role in the trial relevant. 

Pelosi is holding the articles until McConnell agrees to Schumer’s initial request. This withholding also means that it’s unclear as to the timeline of when the Senate’s trial will take place. However, both the Democrats and Republicans seem to be rather relaxed about it. Republicans and McConnell have argued that they’re in “no hurry” regarding receiving the articles and that there’s no advantage in delaying a trial the Senate doesn’t really want anything to do with anyway. Democrats are also taking their time in regards to how to go about the situation, and will be meeting Thursday morning (December 19th) to further discuss the matter. 

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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

The main goal regarding the withholding is to ensure that the Republicans will be offering a fair and thorough trial, and with a Republican-controlled Senate, it’s unclear as to what type of reassurance that would be. James Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat House member, stated that they will be holding the articles “as long as it takes, even if [McConnell] doesn’t come around to committing a fair trial, [we’ll] keep those articles here.” 

McConnell is expected to address the press about the impeachment and the future of the trial Thursday morning as well, and it’s likely that he will discuss the withholding of the letters as a sign that the Democrats are “too afraid to even submit their shoddy work product to the Senate.” He is also expected to announce the date of the Senate trial by the end of the week. However, with Pelosi’s last-minute decision to hold the articles, it’s unlikely that he will make that announcement during his Thursday morning speech. 

Additionally, Pelosi threw another wrench into the trial’s plans by delaying the naming of impeachment managers for the Senate’s trial; the House is likely to make that decision within the next few days as well. 

“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side, and we hope that will be soon. So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us, so hopefully it will be fair,”  Pelosi said. 

Impeachment

House Panel Votes to Approve Articles of Impeachment

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While President Trump has not yet officially been impeached, that historic outcome has become even more likely as the House of Representatives prepares for a full vote on both of the articles that have been presented by the House Judiciary Committee. The full votes on both articles will be held sometime next week, probably Wednesday, and are likely to pass along party lines. Republican members of Congress have shown absolutely no cracks in their resistance to impeachment, as every Republican representative has voted against the process since it began several weeks ago and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that he expects no Republican senators to vote to remove President Trump from office.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Chairman Jerry Nadler, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff presented the Articles of Impeachment during a press conference on Tuesday, with formal charges including Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. Democrats opted to keep the focus of impeachment narrow in order to build the strongest possible case in a short period of time; although the Mueller Report outlined several instances of potential obstruction of justice, which has been presented as an article in previous impeachments, the articles that the House Panel just approved involved only the misconduct that become evident in connection to a whistleblower complaint from a few months ago. Considering the President’s misconduct to be a national security emergency, Democrats are undergoing the impeachment process as quickly as they possibly can, choosing not to wait for the courts to decide whether the White House is legally obligated to produce documents and witnesses in accordance with numerous congressional subpoenas.

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While the outcome in the Democrat-led House of Representatives has been highly predictable throughout the impeachment process, the upcoming trial in the Senate, which is led by Republican Mitch McConnell, is less clear. However, McConnell has shed some light on what the Senate trial will look like during a recent interview with Fox News, during which the Senate Majority Leader indicated that the Senate would follow the White House’s lead in defining the parameters of the trial. 

It’s long been predicted that, regardless of how long the Senate trial goes on and how it is defined, Republicans would vote along party lines to protect the President. Now, McConnell has reaffirmed the congressional body’s fealty to the president, as he has taken the historically unprecedented step of allowing the defendant of a high-stakes trial to define the terms of the trial that will determine whether he is found guilty of committing high crimes and misdemeanors. McConnell said that there is ‘zero chance’ Trump is removed by impeachment, and given the Republicans’ unyielding loyalty to the current Commander in Chief, there is little reason to doubt him.

While President Trump will probably not be removed from office after the Senate trial, impeachment is nonetheless likely to have a lasting political impact, as the general election that will determine the next President of the United States will be held in less than a year. Though one can make a fairly confident prediction that Trump will remain the President through 2020, virtually nobody can speak with certainty at this point about the likelihood of his winning reelection next year. Both Democrats and Republicans have said that they hope impeachment will have a positive effect on their political power; Democrats argue that the public process of impeachment helps to inform the electorate about the President’s many abuses of power and thus of the urgency of removing him from office, whereas Republicans see the outcome of impeachment as a victory for the President, who is sure to portray his acquittal in the Senate as a vindication of his position that Article II of the Constitution, which defines the parameters of the executive branch of the federal government, gives him the power to do whatever he wants.

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Perhaps the biggest takeaway of the likely outcome of impeachment will be that Trump’s claim to absolute executive power, unburdened by the Constitution’s centuries-old system of checks and balances, will be correct. At this moment in history, as Democrats have taken pains to point out time and time again, impeachment and the upcoming general election are the only two remaining constitutional checks preventing the President from consolidating his power and transforming the country’s government into a monarchy or dictatorship. 

If Trump is acquitted by the Senate, as he probably will be, Congress will establish a precedent that it is OK for the President to cheat in American elections by coordinating with foreign powers to interfere in the democratic process around which the country’s entire government is built. Though the upcoming presidential election is likely to be compromised as a result of efforts by the President and Republicans to undermine democracy, it will determine whether or not the United States will remain a republic or descend into an authoritarian state, as the president’s last three years of attacks against the institutions of democratic governance have been remarkably effective and are certain to continue to their completion if he is given another term in office.

White House

Key Details Omitted from White House Transcript, Official Testifies

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The House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry has been progressing rapidly, despite the protests of Republican members of both the House and the Senate as well as strong opposition from the White House. While the White House has attempted to block witnesses from testifying before committees investigating potentially impeachable offenses, many government officials who have been subpoenaed have appeared in the House of Representatives nonetheless, offering damning testimony that corroborates both the whistleblower complaint which started the inquiry as well as leaks from the Trump administration and a reconstructed transcript released by the White House describing a call between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine. 

As witness testimony reveals the extent of the Trump administration’s involvement in attempting to secure political dirt from a foreign power, it is also revealing the administration’s attempts to hide their tracks. Yesterday, for instance, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman testified that the transcript released by the White House omitted details about the President’s conversation with Zelensky, suggesting a possible attempt to obscure the nature of the call.

According to Vindman, Mr. Zelensky said the word “Burisma,” the Ukranian energy company Hunter Biden worked for, whereas the official reconstructed transcript is more vague. Additionally, Vindman claims that Mr. Trump mentioned the existence of recordings of Mr. Biden discussing issues of Ukrainian corruption, whereas the reconstructed transcript includes no such detail. Vindman testified that he tried to correct the record, but his corrections were ignored, which is unusual for official notes of conversations between the President and other officials. 

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Additionally, previous witness testimony has alleged that reconstructed transcripts, including the one released by the White House in response to the whistleblower complaint, were stored in a top-secret computer system to which only a handful of individuals had access, in a break from traditional White House methods of handling this sort of information, suggesting that the White House intended to keep secret the details of this call among others even within its own administration. 

Vindman’s testimony doesn’t change investigators’ impression of the fundamental purpose of the call, but rather bolsters the accusation that the call represented an improper request for the Ukranian President to assist in Trump’s reelection campaign. As such, Vindman’s testimony simply adds to the increasingly convincing collection of evidence procured by Congress, enabling the rapid transition towards the public phase of the impeachment inquiry. 

Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the House of Representatives’ main investigators, has declined to take legal action against White House officials who have refused to comply with subpoenas, instead relying on the testimonies of others, including diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker. Democrats have stated that they want to complete their impeachment investigation quickly, and given the substantial amount of evidence already available to investigators, the testimonies from witnesses who have refused to cooperate with subpoenas are considered unnecessary.

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Although Republicans have decried the impeachment inquiry as an illegitimate and partisan attack on the President fueled by lingering resentment about the outcome of the 2016 election, Democrats’ actions have nonetheless plunged the GOP into chaos, as their defenses of the President’s conduct have become increasingly strained. During Vindman’s testimony, a shouting match between Democratic and Republican representatives reportedly erupted, and last week Republicans attempted to physically obstruct witness testimony, refusing to leave a secure hearing room during a scheduled closed-door proceeding. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate have generally been uncharacteristically quiet about the specific accusations, claiming that they are reserving judgment until the trial.

Republican protests to the impeachment proceedings have generally been specious — talking points have included the claim that the President is being robbed of due process rights, that the House never voted to formalize the inquiry, and that Republicans have been denied access to witness testimonies. All of these complaints have been addressed by Pelosi’s announcement of a vote to formalize proceedings. Nancy Pelosi has called for a vote tomorrow, October 31st, on a resolution to formalize rules for the public phase of the impeachment inquiry, which would allow Republicans to call witnesses, make witness testimony public, and allow Trump’s lawyers to present a formal defense of him. 

While Republicans in the House of Representatives are likely to continue to decry the proceedings despite these concessions, the Democratic majority in the House ensures that impeachment is all but certain. Only time will tell, however, whether the Senate will decide to remove the President from office, which requires a two-thirds majority vote, meaning 20 Republican senators would have to break ranks with the President, an unlikely but possible scenario.

New York Times

Outraged Americans Attack The New York Times For Outing Whistle-Blower As CIA Agent

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The New York Times is finding itself in a massive battle with its subscribers as people are taking to social media with the hashtag #CancelNYT, after the newspaper published specific details about the White House whistle-blower that kick started Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry. The New York Times posted an article on Thursday evening identifying the whistle-blower as a male CIA officer who formerly was detailed to the White House. 

Three unnamed sources delivered confirmed accounts of the whistle-blower details to The Times, while the whistle-blower “himself” had nothing to do with it.  The lawyers of the anonymous source refuse to comment on the occupation status of the whistle-blower as a means of protection, something the public believes the Times had complete disregard for. 

Earlier this week the whistle-blower submitted a formal nine page complaint report that accused the  White House of covering up a phone call between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Ukraine. The phone call took place in July and was in regard to Trump asking Zelensky to investigate not only the former Vice President Joe Biden, but his family as well, specifically his son Hunter Biden. This pushed Pelosi to file an official inquiry for impeachment. 

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The U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks over impeachment inquiry 

The Times revealed the most details about the whistle-blower since the complaint was filed, thus igniting a wave of angry Twitter users, who in a matter of minutes got #CancelNYT trending at number one worldwide. The intense response comes from a place of individuals knowing the severe consequences a whistle-blower will face if their identity is revealed. Many are mainly concerned for the safety of the John Doe who kick started a historic impeachment inquiry. 

“Our country’s heroes are worth far more than clicks and views. Doxxing the whistle-blower endangers the individual’s life, which is especially heinous considering the whistle-blower went through proper government channels. The NYT protects Trump sources better than this. #CancelNYT” tweeted Dr. Eugene Gu, who’s politically gauged tweets often get major media attention. 

A source from the Times defended the papers actions stating that the White House already knew that the whistle-blower was a CIA member before the article was published, and the information that was published still gave little to no details about the identity. Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of the New York Times, responded to the harsh online criticism with another article/series of tweets from the official Times Twitter. Stating that the limited information was necessary to prove to the public that the John Doe was a credible source, and not just some random individual who doesn’t like Trump. 

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Demonstrators hold up letters reading “Impeach” during a rally held in support of impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump

“The role of the whistle-blower, including his credibility and his place in the government, is essential to understanding one of the most important issues facing the country – whether the President of the United states abused power and whether the White House covered it up,” said Dean Baquet. 

The Times has been trying their hardest to clean up the mess that is Cancel Culture coming for them, however, the paper was already under serious heat after reporting on a sexual assault claim made against Brett Kavanaugh. The report was filled with editorial blunders that failed to mention that the alleged victim didn’t comment to the Times on the details, and also had no recollection of the assault that the Times reported on. The Times is continuing to plead with the social media army, claiming that there’s already a war on journalists from the government and the public shouldn’t feed into what the administration wants, however, many are boycotting the paper using their own free will, and are just upset at the papers total disregard for human privacy.