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Due Process in the Sandbox
Impeachment is being obscured by politicians throwing sand.
President Donald J. Trump is not the first person with power in the federal bureaucracy to take on undermining the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. Litigation under that law had to be brought in the D.C. Circuit and that court has been almost uniformly hostile to whistleblowers, chipping away at a law it plainly disfavors.
The last major amendment seeking to strengthen whistleblower protection was signed by President Obama in 2012 for two purposes: to protect whistleblowers working in intelligence from loss of their security clearances and to extend jurisdiction to hear cases under the law to the rest of the federal judiciary.
Having worked in intelligence, I am here to tell you that loss of your security clearance is a fate worse than straight up firing. If you lose your clearance for cause, your government can restrict your travel until satisfied you are no threat to national security.
If you are allowed to remain with your employer, your duties would become whatever the local equivalent is to mucking out the stables. You might temporarily lose custody of your passport. The status of a person who has lost a security clearance is lower than a snake’s belly.
