In the months leading up to a CIA whistleblower's hearsay complaint about President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the US intelligence community quietly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers must provide first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings, according to The Fed

Then, on September 24 - days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public - a new version of the whistleblower complaint form revised in August, 2019 - the Disclosure of Urgent Concern" form - was uploaded and used by the CIA employee to file the complaint.

And while the public just learned about this a week ago, the whistleblower letter to House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) was dated August 12, the same month the form was updated.

The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump's July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only "heard about [wrongdoing] from others."