Former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has said she thinks “we should always protect whistleblowers,” as President Trump and his allies call for the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry to be outed.
“I mean, I believe in whistleblower laws. I think you have to protect a whistleblower, and then I think, in turn, the whistleblower has to abide by those laws and the fact that they don’t allow any sort of partisan leaking or anything like that to have happen,” Haley, who served in Trump’s administration, told CNN Thursday.
“We don’t know that that’s happened either, but until then, I do think we should always protect whistleblowers,” she added.
Asked whether this was a disagreement with Trump, she said, “You can call it disagreeing.”
Despite the “disagreeing” over the whistleblower, Haley backed Trump on his overall impeachment stance, calling it a series of “political games back and forth.”
“I think he feels like this truly is a witch hunt,” she told the news network. “And so he has his back up, and he thinks that this is all a way for y’all to trick everybody into saying something. I just know how he thinks. And so from that standpoint, he’s going to have his guard up, he’s going to have his back up and think you’re trying to pull his people in so that you can interrogate them or humiliate them or do something else.”
Trump has called for the whistleblower to be named publicly, including saying that news outlets should use name of the person suspected to be the whistleblower.
The House launched an impeachment inquiry after September after the whistleblower raised concerns about the president’s dealings with Ukraine.