The U.S. intelligence community secretly overturned the requirement that whistleblowers in their complaints should state first-hand information.
According to The Federalist, the new application form was uploaded to the website of the director of National Intelligence on September 24, a few days before the publication of a complaint by an American intelligence officer about Trump because of his conversation with Zelensky.
However, as the publication notes, the marking on the document indicates that changes to the form were made in August 2019, but the exact date is not known. The complaint that led to the beginning of the impeachment proceedings against Trump is dated August 12.
The complainant claims in his report that he was based on data received from “more than half a dozen” US officials, but he was not a witness to “most of the events described.” As explained by the Federalist, according to the previous rules, the complaint, in which the information is presented not first hand, should have been rejected.
Trump has already commented on the publication of the publication. “They were caught! Stop the witch hunt now,” he wrote.