Rep. Ted W. Lieu, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee helping to lead the impeachment process, previously used his Congressional position to promote Whistleblower Aid, a small nonprofit started by the attorney for the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment claims.
Upon its founding in September 2017 in the wake of Trump’s presidency, Whistleblower Aid blasted advertisements around D.C. actively seeking whistleblowers during the Trump administration.
The week that Whistleblower Aid commenced operations, Lieu promoted the group using language clearly meant to encourage anti-Trump whistleblowers.
“Now, more than ever, we need patriots to step forward and inform the public of any unlawful or inappropriate activity by government officials,” Lieu said in a statement about Whistleblower Aid issued from his office and posted on his Congressional website.
“Whistleblower Aid is exactly the type of organization the American people need to make sure government is held accountable,” Lieu continued.
“Earlier this year Representative Don Beyer and I created a resource guide on how to blow the whistle under the Whistleblower Protection Laws passed by Congress. Whistleblower Aid can help employees and contractors navigate through what can be a complicated set of laws and regulations.”
The California Congressman also promoted the group on Twitter:
Support from @RepTedLieu: "Whistleblower Aid is exactly the type of organization the American people need" https://t.co/dGg14N5cYd
— Whistleblower Aid (@wbaidlaw) September 18, 2017
Besides his role on the Foreign Affairs Committee, one of three Congressional committees leading the impeachment hearings, Lieu also sits on the House Judiciary Committee which is poised to take a more active role in the impeachment process.
Mark Zaid is the activist attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Trump.
Largely missing from the avalanche of news media coverage about Zaid’s anonymous client rocking the nation’s capital is that at the beginning of Trump’s presidency Zaid co-founded Whistleblower Aid. That detail is also not mentioned in Zaid’s bio on his attorney website.
This even though Whistleblower Aid has been actively helping the first whistleblower also being represented by Zaid by setting up a GoFundMe page seeking to raise funds for the purported whistleblower’s defense. The page already brought in some $222,900 with a goal of raising $300,000.
Whistleblower Aid did not sit around waiting for whistleblowers when it was launched in September 2017.
Upon its founding, Whistleblower Aid actively sought to attract the attention of Trump administration government employees by reportedly blasting advertisements for its whistleblower services on Metro trains, using mobile billboards that circled government offices for 10 hours a day, and handing out whistles on street corners as a gimmick to gain attention.
When Whistleblower Aid was first formed, the main banner for the mission statement of its website contained clearly anti-Trump language.
“Today our Republic is under threat. Whistleblower Aid is committed to protecting the rule of law in the United States and around the world,” read the previous statement which can still be viewed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
That part of the mission statement received attention in the conservative media.
The sentence “today our Republic is under threat,” has since been scrubbed from the website. The mission statement now only reads, “Whistleblower Aid is committed to protecting the rule of law in the United States and around the world.”
Speaking to the Washington Post just after Whistleblower Aid’s founding, John Tye, who co-founded the organization with Zaid, claimed, “This is not a partisan effort,” and then went on to express seemingly partisan alarm about Trump.
Tye continued, “At the same time, yes, the rule of law starts with the office of the president. Like many other people, we are definitely concerned about things that are happening in the administration. The decision to fire [FBI Director] James Comey. The lack of transparency. A lot of people have questions about whether this administration respects the rule of law.”
Far-left ties, Democrat links
Zaid is representing the so-called whistleblower as an attorney for the small Compass Rose Legal Group. The firm’s founder, Andrew Bakaj, confirmed that his law firm is also representing “multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General.”
Breitbart News reported that a search of Bakaj’s Twitter account finds rabid anti-Trump posts such as repeated advocacy for Trump cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to remove Trump as president over claimed competency issues.
Zaid, meanwhile, doubles as Executive Director and founder of the James Madison Project, which says it seeks to promote government accountability. The Project features on its four-person advisory board John Podesta, who led Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, served as Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton and founded the Soros-funded Center for American Progress pushing a progressive agenda.
Whistleblower Aid co-founder Tye himself is a whistleblower. He is a former State Department official who went public in 2014 about U.S. government electronic surveillance practices.
Tye’s bio on Whistleblower Aid’s website brandishes his work for far-left groups.
The bio reads:
Mr. Tye has worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Avaaz, and also Southeast Louisiana Legal Services as a Skadden Fellow. He was on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is known for its anti-conservative stance and controversially publishes a “hate map” listing groups that warn about radical Islam such as Jihad Watch, the Clarion Project, the Center for Security Policy. On that same “hate map” are racist extremist organizations like Global Crusaders: Order of the Ku Klux Klan and United Klans of America.
Tye’s other former employer, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is financed heavily by billionaire activist and Democratic Party mega-donor George Soros and is known for its hyper-partisan liberal activism.
Avaaz, a radical group where Tye served as campaign and legal director, describes itself as a “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” The group has repeatedly engaged in anti-Israel activism.
Channeling the mantra of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, Avaaz says it aims to “organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.”
Avaaz was founded in 1997 by the Soros-funded, partisan MoveOn.org organization and by the Soros-funded Res Publica activist group.
Tax forms from Soros’s Open Society document donations to Res Publica specifically earmarked for support to Avaaz. Res Publica oversees Avaaz activism.
The same year that Whistleblower Aid was founded, Avaaz’s former general counsel and campaign director, Ian Bassin, in 2017 formed United to Protect Democracy. The latter is a grouping of former top lawyers for the Obama administration working to utilize legal advocacy methods to oppose Trump’s policies.
Bassin’s United to Protect Democracy works in partnership with the Brennan Center for Justice, located at NYU School of Law. The Brennan Center is heavily financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations and is the recipient of numerous Open Society grants.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.
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