By Patrick Martin

October 07, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - The conflict between President Trump and congressional Democrats escalated over the weekend, with attorneys for the CIA officer who triggered an impeachment inquiry declaring that there were other “whistleblowers” coming forward to provide testimony in support of his allegations against Trump.

Like the first whistleblower, the additional witness or witnesses were said to be intelligence officials. At least one has been interviewed by Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who declared the initial complaint against Trump, over his efforts to get the president of Ukraine to provide derogatory material on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, to be “credible” and “urgent.”

Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the first whistleblower, tweeted Saturday, “I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers.” Mark Zaid, another attorney for the first whistleblower, said the second intelligence official had firsthand knowledge of some of the allegations made in the initial complaint.

A second whistleblower, whether he or she made an independent complaint or merely bolstered the first whistleblower, would mark a further intensification of the efforts by sections of the national security apparatus either to remove Trump outright or to shift US foreign policy in a direction even more hostile to Russia.

The most direct expression of the role of the intelligence apparatus in the Democratic Party impeachment drive was the appearance Sunday of former CIA Director John Brennan on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The CIA director under Obama now receives a fat paycheck as “senior national security and intelligence analyst” for the television network.

Brennan was asked by host Chuck Todd to “assess the stability of the American government” as the CIA would assess another country. Brennan answered, “We would look at it as a very corrupt government that is under the sway, right now, of this powerful individual who has been able to just corrupt the institutions and the laws of that country.”

“I think it’s no longer, you know, a democracy,” Brennan continued, referring to Trump as “an autocrat,” and concluding, “there’s just tremendous political instability here … which is consuming the government now. And it’s not able to take care of the issues that it needs to address, whether it be on the domestic front or the national security or the foreign policy front.”