US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he wants and deserves to meet the anonymous whistleblower at the center of the fast-moving scandal that has triggered an impeachment probe against him.
The whistleblower, who could testify soon before Congress, fears for their safety if their identity is revealed, according to a lawyers’ letter released by CBS News.
Battling the deepest crisis of his presidency, Trump in a series of tweets railed against accusations that he should be impeached for urging Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, his potential 2020 White House challenger.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” Trumped said.
Trump accused top Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff of lying to Congress last week about what Trump said to Zelensky in the July phone call.
“He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason,” he wrote.
Trump’s Republican aides have sought to turn the tables on Democrats pushing for his impeachment, insisting that the president was the true
“whistleblower” as he had asked Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son for corruption.
“This individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government,” Trump advisor Stephen Miller insisted on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Getting to the bottom of a corruption scandal in Ukraine is in the American national interest.”
Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani — who has emerged as his point man in the Ukraine scandal — led the charge along with Miller in combative Sunday talk show appearances.
Brandishing what he said were affidavits incriminating Biden’s son Hunter over his work at a Ukrainian company, Giuliani said Trump was duty bound to raise the issue with Kiev.
“If he hadn’t asked them to investigate Biden, he would have violated the constitution,” Giuliani told ABC’s “This Week,” charging that “Donald Trump was framed by the Democrats.”
Source: AFP
