[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 178 (Thursday, November 7, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S6455]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Whistleblowers

  Mr. President, on the whistleblower, yesterday, the House 
Intelligence Committee announced the schedule for its first week of 
public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry, including testimony 
from the current and former top U.S. diplomats in Ukraine. These public 
hearings are a reminder that the whistleblower's account has already 
been corroborated many times over by officials with firsthand knowledge 
of the situation.
  Yet there remains a searing focus by the President and one Member of 
this Chamber on the whistleblower. Even though his or her account has 
been verified by other sources, the White House and, most particularly, 
the junior Senator from Kentucky, seem committed to discrediting the 
whistleblower, disclosing the whistleblower's identity, and turning the 
rightwing media machine on this person--and they can be vicious.
  The junior Senator from Kentucky went so far as to block a simple 
resolution from my friend the Senator from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono, that 
would have reconfirmed the Senate's support for whistleblower 
protection laws--laws that have been on the books for a very long time.
  The whole concept started with the Continental Congress, even before 
the Constitution. We are going down a dangerous road when Members of 
this body are refusing to stand up for our Nation's laws, particularly 
those laws that enforce the rule of law and make sure our government is 
doing what the people want.
  These attempts to expose the whistleblower are unfortunately not the 
only example of how a few of my colleagues are taking the defense of 
this President too far. It seems that with each coming week, sometimes 
each coming day, the President's allies in Congress come up with a new 
tortured defense of his actions. House Republicans have gone from 
attacking the process because it was closed to attacking it because it 
was opened. They have gone from insisting on ``no quid pro quo'' to 
saying ``maybe quid pro quo but who cares?''
  Here in the Senate, we heard a new one from the chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee, who said the Trump policy on Ukraine was so 
``incoherent'' that the administration was ``incapable of performing a 
quid pro quo.'' That is a good one. Seriously, he said that. They are 
reaching. They are reaching as far as they can because they know that 
the facts--at least as we have heard from the House; we will wait until 
they come over here, if they do--that the facts about what the 
President did are so damning.
  There was even a Member of this Chamber who went so far as to insult 
the Speaker's intelligence at a political rally--a childish and nasty 
smear that is far out of bounds.
  Nobody is happy about the fact that the House is examining the 
potential impeachment of a President. It has always been a sad and 
somber process. But there is no excuse for jumping to conclusions, 
advocating for lawbreaking, or resorting to nasty insults. This is a 
time when we must check partisanship at the door, study the facts in 
the case, and make our own independent judgments. That is our duty. I 
will remind all of our colleagues that history will one day judge 
whether or not we lived up to it.