‘I enjoyed a very good relationship with Jim Clapper, we got along fabulously…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Investigative journalists on Wednesday linked the attorney representing one—and possibly two—anonymous, partisan whistleblowers to disgraced former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The Federalist reported that Andrew Bakaj, an attorney representing the so-called whistleblowers, was assisted by Charles McCullough, who previously held the role of inspector general of the intelligence community (ICIG) and reported directly to Clapper.
“I enjoyed a very good relationship with Jim Clapper, we got along fabulously,” McCullough told a DC news channel in December.
McCullough, now an attorney with Compass Rose Legal Group, was the chief auditor and ombudsman for the Obama administration’s vast network of spy agencies at the time when they became embroiled in several corruption scandals of their own.
Increasingly, in ethically dubious matters such as the commissioning of the notorious Steele Dossier and in the attempts to smear Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, partisan operatives acting as attorneys have conspired with powerful left-wing clients to wage political warfare under the auspices of privileged counsel.
The reporting from The Federalist would seem to confirm that some of the same deep-state players involved in the earlier Russia collusion hoax are behind the new ‘whistleblower’ complaint that President Donald Trump sought an improper quid-pro-quo arrangement with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a July phone call.
McCullough said he had initially assisted with the whistleblower complaint but had now separated himself from the process.
“I am not part of the whistleblower legal team,” he told The Federalist. “I assisted Andrew with process issues at the very beginning, and then withdrew.”
Whatever conflicts of interest he may have perceived, however, did not extend to fellow members of his law firm—including Bakaj, a former staffer for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, as well as Hillary Clinton during her time as a New York senator.
The anonymous whistleblower who initiated the complaint is also said to have had professional ties to one of Trump’s current opponents running in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, noted Washington Examiner columnist Byron York.
It is widely believed that Democrats’ latest impeachment efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives reflect something of a pre-emptive strike to discredit the White House and Justice Department in anticipation of the soon-to-be-released report from the investigation being led by special prosecutor John Durham.
Clapper—himself likely under investigation by the Justice Department for his role in the Russia hoax—most recently garnered headlines for trying to pin the blame onto his former boss, then-President Barack Obama.
Now a CNN national security analyst, Clapper previously was known to have lied to Congress regarding mass surveillance and data collection by intelligence agencies—which only came to light, ironically, due to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures to The Guardian.
Yet, Clapper also played a large role in crafting the whistleblower protection policies that are now being weaponized for use against the Left’s political adversaries.
Current ICIG Michael Atkinson, meanwhile, who succeeded McCullough in the role, has come under fire for modifying those whistleblower policies to allow complaints involving secondhand information to be reported to Congress.
Atkinson reached out directly to House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., to inform him of the complaint prior to its public release, but he has continued to with withhold information about the whistleblower from GOP leaders in the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Atkinson’s judgement and allegiances also came under scrutiny due to the fact that he had dismissed calls to investigate a suspicious tarmac meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton.
At the time, Lynch was overseeing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling and deletion of State Department emails that were stored on a private server.