Tom answers with more conservative crackpottery. The whistleblower's account according to the State Department IG contains both first-hand and second-hand information. The call summary and the transcript itself (which we haven't seen) are official records of the government, not second-hand information. The whistleblower account is a road map that lays out who to talk to for more first-hand accounts and which official records to get. Also, there are numerous exceptions to the hearsay rule which Tom can find in the Federal Rules of Evidence if he is so inclined.
Furthermore, Bill Clinton's Impeachment was based upon the hearsay testimony of Linda Tripp. Among those most forcefully distorting the heresy rule, Miss Lindsey, for example, were active participants in the Clinton Impeachment based upon hearsay. I don't see anyone making the argument that they made a horrible mistake Impeaching Clinton based on hearsay and advocating the government reimburse him for all of his legal fees for their improper impeachment.
As to Tom's false claim about the whistleblower rules having been changed in August, he is incorrect. Numerous news and fact-checking organizations have looked into this. They all agree this claim is pure horseshit straight out of Trump's vulgar mouth. Here is what factcheck.org found:
President Donald Trump and some of his defenders have advanced a bogus theory that whistleblower rules were changed to allow a complaint alleging misconduct by the president to be forwarded to Congress based only on secondhand information.
There was no such change in law or policy, according to a Sept. 30 statement issued by the independent Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
“In fact, by law the Complainant – or any individual in the Intelligence Community who wants to report information with respect to an urgent concern to the congressional intelligence committees – need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint,” the three-page statement said.
The ICIG statement also said that the whistleblower had “direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct” and that “other information obtained during the ICIG’s preliminary review supported the Complainant’s allegations.”
Link
It is amazing what Tom could learn if he would spend 2-3 minutes researching his own claims rather than trying to sniff out the truth from Sean Hannity's ass.