Trump shares name of alleged whistleblower in now-removed retweet

(CNN) — President Donald Trump retweeted an attack that included an unsubstantiated name of the intelligence community whistleblower at the heart of the Ukraine scandal as part of a series of rants and conspiratorial posts overnight.

Trump or someone with access to his Twitter account removed the retweet Saturday morning.

Other retweets were also reversed, including pro-Trump and anti-Democrat memes from suspicious-looking Twitter accounts. But his whistleblower-related post was the most noteworthy because nearly every public official involved in the impeachment inquiry agreed that the identity of the original complainant should be protected.

Trump has shared more than 100 posts about the whistleblower since September, almost entirely critical, but until this week he had refrained from sharing any content directly pointing to a person’s name.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Friday night’s retweet and Saturday morning’s reversal.

Some far-right media outlets and personalities have published stories claiming to know the name of the whistleblower, but his or her identity is not known and has not been reported by mainstream outlets — including CNN.

On Thursday, the President retweeted a post from his reelection campaign containing an article with the purported name of the person.

Then he shared a post with the unsubstantiated name late Friday night.

Earlier in the evening, one of the lawyers for the intelligence community whistleblower, Mark Zaid, reiterated a message he has been sharing for months: “Protect the Whistleblower.”

“I guarantee Republicans will want #whistleblowers during next Democrat Administration, whenever that may be,” Zaid wrote.”They likely won’t have many given their continual attacks on integrity of lawful #WBer system.”

Twitter has said that tweets with the unsubstantiated name of the whistleblower do not violate its rules. However, sharing personal information about the named person, like his or her phone number, would be a violation.

Facebook has taken a harder line on this issue, invoking its policy prohibiting the outing of any “witness, informant, or activist.” The site has been removing content with the purported name.

According to the Trump Twitter Archive, which tracks every post from the President, he shared 55 posts on Friday, mostly by retweeting pro-Trump accounts, some of them obscure.

Many of the accounts are anonymous or semi-anonymous, with names including such phrases as “Trump Lady,” “America First” and “pet lovers for Trump.”

Some of the accounts show signs of being run by spam operations, but others appear to be genuine, passionate Trump supporters.

Trump tweeted against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her “crazy,” an insult that he has tweeted at her seven times in the past five days. Pelosi, in previous responses to Trump’s tweeted insults, has said she prays for the President.

He also retweeted people calling Democrats “rats” and videos claiming to prove “collusion between DNC & Ukraine during 2016 Presidential campaign.” There has been no evidence of collusion between the Democratic National Committee and Ukraine in the last election.

Vox’s Aaron Rupar, who closely tracks the President’s public comments, wrote on Twitter Friday night, “The President of the United States has, today alone, retweeted 2 QAnon fan accounts, a Pizzagate account, an account that compared his following to a cult, and an account that described Obama as ‘Satan’s Muslim Scum.’ And this insanity isn’t even a blip on the news radar.”