A nonprofit representing government whistleblowers is busy these days.
Since its formation in the early 1990s, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has provided legal help and resources to government whistleblowers across presidential administrations.
“Whistleblowing has traditionally been a nonpartisan thing,” said Tim Whitehouse, who joined PEER as its executive director in 2019, following stints leading Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility and a decade at EPA.
But under Trump 2.0, PEER has seen a “20-fold increase” over previous years in the number of civil servants reaching out for help, Whitehouse said.
The group is small, with just 12 employees across the country, he said. They include some recent additions of former Justice Department officials. The group’s fundraising has been up lately, which Whitehouse attributes to donors’ frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce.
Whitehouse spoke with POLITICO’s E&E News this week about finding whistleblowers, their recent complaints and what he tells nervous federal employees.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Tell me about PEER’s origin story.
Its roots date back to the 1980s when there was a Forest Service employee who was concerned that he had to write biological opinions a certain way to allow for clear-cut logging. And from that, he formed an organization that developed into PEER. At first, our focus was heavily on public lands: Forest Service, BLM and park service. But over the years, we’ve evolved into a full-service shop for anyone working on environmental, public health or public lands issues.
How did you find this job?
I actually first heard about PEER when I was an EPA attorney in the 1990s and I worked on wetlands issues.
There was a case I was working on called Sears Island. At the time, Kyla Bennett was working on that case. I did not know this [at the] time, but she had become a whistleblower, because she was asked to change some of the wetlands findings for Sears Island in Maine. The state wanted the development — she refused to do that. I didn’t know until after — in fact, many years later — that she had been working with PEER to represent her against retaliations.
You started at PEER in 2019 at the end of the first Trump administration. What’s different during this Trump administration?
We’re in a period of complete lawlessness, where all the rules and all the expected conduct of government — of elected officials and of the executive branch — have been thrown out the window, and that’s a very dangerous situation to be in.
During the first Trump administration there were people in the administration that understood that we’re a law-based nation and understood they had to work with Congress, which represented the people, to advance agendas. And that’s no longer the case.
How does your process work?
We don’t recruit whistleblowers. We have an intake process so people can come to us because they’ve heard of us, or they’re referred by a friend, or they do a Google search for legal help, or [through] the unions.
We probably have easily a 20-fold increase in the number of people reaching out to us as previous years. It’s a very dire situation for public employees who are being terminated illegally and who are being subject to very coercive work environments that are designed to get them to quit.
Are people more nervous to talk to you now than they have been historically?
Yeah, I think people in government understand that we now are moving into a different type of government, an authoritarian government. A government that attacks and attempts to destroy those who voice dissent.
What do you tell people who are worried? Do you feel like you can assure them that they’ll be protected?
When people come to us with wrongdoing, it’s ultimately their decision on how they want to handle that. It’s important they understand the different ways available to them to do that and what the risks are to them in their careers.
Whistleblowers in general are people who are driven by the need to report something that is wrong, and they have a strong moral compass and they are people who want to make a difference in their lives. We work with them on how to do that. Right now, things are in flux, so we do have to be more careful and thoughtful about how we do that.
How have your finances changed during this administration?
We’re a very small organization. We’ve always worked on the margins of a budget through Democratic or Republican administrations, but in the last six months people have stepped up and donated more because they hate to see what’s happening to the civil service, what’s happening to the young people who recently entered government and were fired.
We typically in the last few years have been between $1.4 [million] and $1.8 million. We will be above $2 million this year. It’s not astronomical, but we are seeing an increase in support.
Are you planning to hire anyone with that extra money?
We’ve hired a new general counsel from the Department of Justice. And our former general counsel, Paula Dinerstein, has moved over to senior counsel, so that’s an additional person. We’ve hired a litigation assistant from the Department of Justice also.
