Whistleblower’s lawyers fear for his safety amid Trump remarks

The lawyers for the intelligence official who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Trump that triggered a formal impeachment inquiry have expressed “serious concerns” for their client’s safety, according to reports.

A letter signed by the whistleblower’s lead attorney, Andrew Bakaj, and sent to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire pointed to Trump’s call for “the person who gave the whistleblower the information” to be publicly identified, NBC News reported.

The letter, dated Saturday and made public Sunday, said events from the past week “have heightened our concerns that our client’s identity will be disclosed publicly and that, as a result, our client will be put in harm’s way.”

Bakaj acknowledged that it was the unidentified whistleblower’s source of information whom Trump’s comment targeted — but he wrote that the distinction “does nothing to assuage our concerns for our client’s safety,” and claimed that “certain individuals” also had offered a $50,000 bounty for information about their client’s identity.

The Washington Examiner, a conservative news outlet, reported last week that two right-wing activists had offered the sum for “credible information corroborating” the person’s identity.

On Sunday, the president suggested in a tweet that he wants the whistleblower to be outed.

“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,” Trump wrote.

The lawyers also called on lawmakers to speak out for whistleblower protections and insist that retaliation against the official — “whether direct or implied” — would not be tolerated, according to Business Insider.

“Unfortunately, we expect this situation to worsen, and to become even more dangerous for our client and any other whistleblowers, as Congress seeks to investigate this matter,” the letter said.