BREAKING: ICIG Complaint Alleges Whistleblower Is Soliciting Illegal Donations Through GoFundMe
The fundraising effort has already raised over a quarter of a million dollars.
A complaint filed with the  Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) claims that the whistleblower may have violated federal law by raising $227,000 via anonymous donors to the crowdfunding website, GoFundMe.
This tells us two things:
- Leftists are willing to toss money at any “Orange Man Bad” cause that they can find.
- It’s a helluva gig if you can get it.
Fox News has the exclusive:
The complaint, which was filed last week and obtained by Fox News, alleged the donations from roughly 6,000 individuals “clearly constitute” gifts to a current intelligence official that may be restricted because of the employee’s official position pursuant to 5 CFR 2635.203 and other statutes. To date, the GoFundMe has raised over $227,000.
The complaint also raised the possibility that some of the donations may have come from prohibited sources, and asked the ICIG to look into whether any “foreign citizen or agent of a foreign government” contributed.
The crowdfunding page could be a problem because earlier this year, the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) made it clear that government employees “may not accept any gift given because of the employee’s official position,” meaning that the gift would not “have been given had the employee not held the status, authority, or duties associated with the employee’s federal position.”
The GoFundMe page was created by the non-profit Whistleblower Aid, co-founded by Mark Zaid (made famous by Trump reading his tweets), and the whistleblower’s attorneys at the Compass Rose Legal Group. The attorneys claim that the crowdfunding effort is to “help support the Intelligence Community Whistleblower [to] raise funds.”
The appeal on the fundraising website is directly related to the whistleblower being a U.S. intelligence officer who is blowing the whistle and it clearly states that. The page reads, “A U.S. intelligence officer… needs your help [with a] crowdfunding effort to support the whistleblower’s lawyers.”
The page also states that donations will only be accepted by U.S. citizens, but the majority of donors were not named. Legal experts told Fox News that the ICIG would likely have to subpoena the website to determine the origin of the donations.
Tully Rinckey PLLC, the law firm representing the individual reporting the allegations, is closely guarding the identity of their client, though Fox News is told the individual is the holder of a top-secret SCI security clearance and has served in government.
“I have not seen anything on this scale,” Anthony Gallo, the managing partner of Tully Rinckey PLLC, told Fox News, referring to the fundraising. “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 whistleblower’s attorneys maintain that any fundraising effort has complied with the law, including ethics requirements.
It certainly looks like a money-making effort set up by the lawyers relying on the “status, authority, or duties,” held by the whistleblower and exploiting his access to classified information.
I can confirm this fundraising effort for the #whistleblower by @wbaidlaw is completely legit.
We would appreciate any and all support US citizens can give. https://t.co/mqoJ8cTvJR
— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) September 26, 2019
“[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 wrote in the letter to ICIG Michael Atkinson, the same government watchdog who originally received the Ukraine complaint from the whistleblower.
That paragraph was a reference to Whistleblower Aid, which is also known as Values United, co-founded by whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid. (Values United tax documents show it paid $258,085 for advertising and consulting services to West End Strategy Team, whose founder Matt Dorf was quoted on the group’s website saying he “influences progressive politics, skillfully shifting the conversation to achieve the goals of West End Strategy clients.”)
“We are requesting you investigate whether [criminal statutes or regulations have] been violated by the federal employee you are protecting when they reportedly requested an investigation into a matter that they had no direct personal knowledge of, and on account of which they were able to obtain sizeable gifts from unknown persons because of their official duty,” Gallo concluded.
Source: Fox News
The whistleblower complaint is what led to the impeachment inquiry and if he and his lawyers are profiting off of that and using it to push a certain political agenda, Americans have a right to know that.
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