Donald Trump with a guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort, West Palm Beach, Florida, December 2019


Donald Trump tries to reveal the name of the whistleblower whose formal complaint — about Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate his political rivals — has led to impeachment and a Senate trial in early 2020.

On vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump has posted scores of tweets and retweets insulting legislators and denouncing the “witch hunt”. On Thursday, he went farther — at the risk of violating federal regulations protecting the whistleblower — with a retweet naming the official.

In mid-August the CIA liaison with the White House over Ukraine filed the complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with UKraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Drawing on information from White House personnel, the CIA officer noted that Trump had sought investigations to tarnish Presidential candidate Joe Biden and to cover up Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US election.

The officer’s complaint, setting out a 10-month campaign by Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, was borne out in testimony from 17 current and former US officials in House impeachment hearings in October and November.

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Trump has retweeted more than 100 posts about the whistleblower since September, but had held back from sharing any with the official’s name until Thursday. He circulated a second tweet with the name late Friday night.

Earlier on Friday, the CIA official’s attorney Mark Zaid appealed to legislators to uphold the Whistleblower Protection Act.

In November, the CIA official’s attorney issued a cease-and-desist warning to Trump, warning that their client was “in physical danger”. But Trump never halted his attacks.

The account which Trump retweeted on Friday night also has a series of Islamophobic tweets and spread the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was a Muslim.