ICIG complaint claims ‘whistleblower’ may be soliciting illegal donations for GoFundMe account

(File photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

As if there weren’t already enough red flags on the CIA official whose actions launched the Democratic Party’s impeachment inquisition with his concerns about President Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president.

A complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General alleges the Ukraine-Trump whistleblower may have violated federal law by indirectly soliciting over a quarter-million dollars from mostly anonymous sources via a GoFundMe page, Fox News reported.

Tuesday’s exclusive report said the complaint, obtained by Fox News, was filed last week and says donations from roughly 6,000 individuals “clearly constitute” gifts to an intelligence official that may be restricted because of the employee’s official position pursuant to 5 CFR 2635.203 and other statutes.

The GoFundMe page had raised over $227,000 according to the article.

There are also concerns that some of the donations may have come from prohibited sources, with the complaint asking the ICIG to probe whether any “foreign citizen or agent of a foreign government” contributed.

Anthony Gallo, the managing partner of Tully Rinckey PLLC, which is representing the complainant, commented on the scale of the fundraising.

“I have not seen anything on this scale,” Gallo told Fox News. “It’s not about politics for my client — it’s whistleblower-on-whistleblower, and [my client’s] only interest is to see the government ethics rules are being complied with government-wide.”

The firm is reportedly “closely guarding” the identity of their client, but the network said it was told this person is the holder of a top-secret SCI security clearance and has served in government.

“[M]y client believes … that the federal employee you are protecting and their attorneys apparently have strategically weaponized their alleged whistleblowing activities into a very lucrative money-making enterprise using a charity incorporated under a different name than the trade name it is using for fund-raising purposes, which would appear to my client to be a clear abuse of the federal employee’s authority and access to classified information,” Gallo said in the letter to ICIG Michael Atkinson.

As previously reported, the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid assisted the whistleblower’s attorneys in launching the GoFundMe page.

More from Fox News:

The whistleblower’s attorneys have called the GoFundMe a way to “help support the Intelligence Community Whistleblower [to] raise funds,” and the GoFundMe page itself states that “A U.S. intelligence officer… needs your help” in the form of a “crowdfunding effort to support the whistleblower’s lawyers.”

The fundraising page claims that “donations will only be accepted from U.S. citizens.” But, the majority of the GoFundMe donors to the whistleblower’s campaign were not named, and legal experts have told Fox News that the ICIG likely would need to subpoena the website to obtain more information on their origins.

 

This may be yet another reason that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has decided that the whistleblower will not testify, going so far as to reject House Republicans’ request to have the individual testify publicly in the impeachment inquiry.

Schiff called the testimony from the person who prompted the Democrat to attempt to remove a sitting president from office “redundant and unnecessary.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Sunday during an interview on Fox News that impeachment was “dead on arrival” in the Senate if the whistleblower doesn’t testify.

There is a litany of concerns about the whistleblower, beginning with the fact that he contacted Schiff’s staff on the House Intel Committee before filing his complaint — a decision that could subject this individual to felony false statement charges for not disclosing that he had contacted Schiff.

The whistleblower also has ties to Biden, who is at the center of the controversy, and there are “swirling” rumors pushed by Paul Sperry, the former D.C. bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, that the man is one of former CIA director John Brennan’s “old CIA humps detailed over to — planted inside — the White House to spy on Trump.”

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