Hurd: ‘I think we should be protecting the whistleblower’

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) said Sunday the government “should be protecting” the whistleblower behind a complaint alleging President Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

“I think we should be protecting the whistleblower,” Hurd, a former CIA officer, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

{mosads}“Having laws in place to ensure that folks throughout the government are able to get to the right committees information they think may be wrongdoing is important. There are troubling issues within the whistleblower report but they are allegations and I think that’s why we should explore these allegations through hearings,” he added.

.@HurdOnTheHill says he hopes the House will hear from the whistleblower and that his identity will remain secret. pic.twitter.com/DOYWCiD2jB

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) September 29, 2019

Hurd was less skeptical than other congressional Republicans about the complaint being gleaned through second-hand sources, telling CBS’ Margaret Brennan, “I  was never in a terrorist organization but I collected a lot of intel on terrorist organizations and so being able to get information secondhand is not necessarily a bad thing.”

“I can’t speak to the veracity” of the complaint, he added, “but that’s why we bring people in and try to collect facts,” saying State Department officials, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden should all be called to testify.

Hurd demurred on whether he supported the impeachment inquiry House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced last week but suggested it was simply a continuation of existing investigations in the House and calling it an inquiry was “wordplay” to assuage “the extreme wings of her party.”