TIME magazine will name the anonymous CIA ‘whistleblower’ who sparked the impeachment proceedings against President Trump its 2019 person of the Year according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The whistleblower himself never had the courage to reveal his identity publicly, and TIME will also honor the civil servants who came forward to testify before Congress about the events described in his report.
Freebeacon.com reports: That report centered on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. It charged that Trump used “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
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The magazine’s Person of the Year award, which began in 1927, goes to the person or group that the publication’s editors feel to have had the greatest influence on the year’s events.
The other nominees in contention for this year’s title were Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, the Hong Kong protesters, and President Trump, who was deemed 2016’s Man of the Year.
The whistleblower’s complaint was filed in early August, but details of its contents did not begin to emerge in the press until September. Pelosi, once hesitant to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump, used the complaint as the basis for her decision to launch an impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24.
TIME‘s announcement will come after weeks of impeachment hearings featuring the witnesses the magazine will honor, and just a day after Democratic leadership in the House formally unveiled articles of impeachment. A vote is expected to come as soon as next week.
TIME magazine said it could not comment on the selection before the choice is revealed Wednesday morning.