Bridgewater, Va.- The phone call that U.S. President Donald Trump had on July 25, 2019, with Ukraine was reported to Congress by a whistleblower.

The call was reportedly about Trump bribing Ukraine to launch an investigation into his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter. This investigation into the Bidens would help Trump in his 2020 re-election by casting doubts on Joe Biden’s integrity.

The whistleblower has decided to remain anonymous to protect themselves out of fear of retaliation. However, while the whistleblower has protection from being fired, Trump can still try to ruin the person’s reputation and career.

There are loopholes in the protections of the whistleblower because the protections are mainly theoretical than they are real. They are theoretical because past whistleblowers have been fired, demoted, or reassigned due to their actions even though there are protections protecting them.

Trump’s allies believe the whistleblower is a CIA analyst who is a democrat and that they worked closely with Joe Biden when he was the Vice President and with former CIA director, John Brennan. Therefore, his allies believe the whistleblower has a motive to have Trump impeached and for him to not win the 2020 election. This perceived bias against Trump is why some say that the impeachment inquiry is not legitimate.

This issue is important to me because as a citizen of this country, I want to know what the people in government positions are doing, especially their misconduct, because their misconduct is representing the country and their state they are representing. If the whistleblower is telling the truth about the misconduct of the government official, then their original motive for informing Congress does not matter because they are doing the right thing by reporting corruption within the government.

The whistleblower witch hunt should be important to you because Trump’s allies are trying to ruin the person’s career and reputation for doing the right thing.

Even though the whistleblower has protections, they can still suffer damage from their rightful actions. The hunt to expose this particular whistleblower may, in the future, cause others to not report about misconduct and corruption because of the fear of their careers and reputations being ruined by those who seek revenge.

The protections should be stronger for whistleblowers. If they are not, corruption could be harder to stop and may  keep growing.

Emily Owen is a first year student. She wrote this commentary as part of Dr. Randy Young’s FILA 150 course which studies current events.