This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, November 16th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry into the president bringing witnesses for public

hearings that began this week.

Cato's Julian Sanchez has followed the proceedings.

He comments.

Democrats have launched their impeachment inquiry not just

declaring it to be so but also taking a vote and actually beginning the

process of holding hearings. They've been doing so across many news networks this week.

And one of the things that Republicans have raised is that this whistleblower, the person who first wrote this letter and went to the CIA IG's office

to, or the intelligence community's IG to get some of this information into the hands of members of Congress.

The complaint is that this whistleblower had a particular axe to grind

and that that should discredit in some way that person's statements.

So of course we don't know with any certainty even though people have been named as candidates

who the

the whistleblower is but it's certainly possible. But that doesn't matter very much

unless we're relying on the whistleblower's direct knowledge of something that can't be

independently checked or confirmed. You know, in both journalism and law enforcement and

for that matter in intelligence, very often you rely on sources at

least initially who may have an agenda or an axe to grind or a motive for coming

forward. Watergate came to light in large part because Mark felt, a senior FBI official, was upset that he had been passed over for the top job.

And he became deep throat in part because he was angry and bitter about that.

...