Welcome to the politics, guys. I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

My guest today is Attorney Scott Oswald, a managing principal at the Employment Law Group.

He has extensive experience with whistleblower, employment discrimination, and wrongful termination cases.

He regularly lectures on employment and whistleblower law, and he's

authored numerous articles on federal and state whistleblower and employment law protections.

Welcome to the show, Scott. Hey, I'm happy to be here, Michael. Thanks for having me.

You know, to start with, I was hoping you could maybe clear up some terminology for me. I hear the terms whistleblower

and leaker a lot, and I'm wondering if you can explain what exactly they mean. Yeah, I completely

get it. I mean, you hear it a lot out there. It's almost interchangeable in the media, but they

really do have distinct

definitions both under under the law in particular and really in how it's used in

the in the federal sector so so let's let's look at it I mean a whistleblower

really is somebody who is disclosing information that ultimately is for the public good.

The purpose behind the disclosure generally is to get the information to people who, maybe it's an organization,

maybe it's a government agency that actually can do

something about it. The nature of the disclosure itself, the extent of the disclosure is just

enough to do that, to meet that purpose. So we're not, for instance, just disclosing information indiscriminately.

And really, the person is using an established mechanism.

So a mechanism that either is provided for by law or provided for by the organization,

with the expectation then that the organization itself will do the right thing and, in fact, investigate.

And what the law then requires organizations to do is actually to do something with that information.

I'm assuming a whistleblower does her part and actually discloses using that established

...