Trump deletes retweet naming whistleblower In a first, the US President publicises name on Twitter

West Palm Beach, Dec. 29: President Donald Trump retweeted a post that included the alleged name of the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment by the House.

Just before midnight on Friday, Trump retweeted a message from Twitter user @Surfermom77, an account that claims to be a woman named Sophia who lives in California. The account shows some indications of automation, including an unusually high amount of activity and profile pictures featuring stock images from the internet.

By Sunday, the post seemed to have disappeared on many users’ feeds, suggesting Trump had deleted it, though it could still be found in other ways, including on a website that logs every presidential tweet.

The retweet then reappeared on Sunday. Twitter told The Associated Press that an outage with one of its systems caused tweets on some accounts, including Trump’s, to be visible to some but not others.

Trump has repeatedly

Donald Trump backed efforts to unmask the whistleblower. But his Friday night retweet marks the first time he has directly sent the alleged name into the Twitter feed of his 68 million followers.

Unmasking the whistleblower, who works in the intelligence field could violate federal protection laws that have historically been supported by both parties.

The whistleblower filed a complaint in August about one of Trump’s telephone conversations with Ukraine’s President

Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other dealings with the Eastern European nation. The complaint prompted House Democrats to launch a probe that ended with Trump’s impeachment earlier this month. The matter now heads to the Senate, where the Republican majority is expected to acquit the President.

The central points from the whistleblower’s complaint were confirmed during the House impeachment hearings by a string of diplomats and other career officials, many of whom testified in public. The White House also released a transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, in which he asks for help investigating former VicePresident Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

Speculation about the whistleblower’s identity has been circulating in conservative media and on social media for months.

US whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials.—AP

An outage with one of Twitter’s systems caused tweets on some accounts, including Trump’s, to be visible to some but not others. TWITTER