As part of that fight, last week House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff issued a subpoena to the office Director of National Intelligence over a formal whistleblower complaint that Schiff says was never acted upon. The DNI's office refused to give the complaint to Schiff and things are getting very tense. Greg Sargent:
The latest development: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has informed Schiff, the California Democrat and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, that he will not forward a whistleblower’s complaint to the committee, as required by law.
Yet the legal rationale for refusing to do this appears specious — and raises further questions as to why this is happening at all.
This all started when Schiff announced that the Inspector General at the ODNI had alerted him to a whistleblower’s complaint that had been submitted to him. Schiff noted that the IG assessed the complaint as “credible.”
But as Schiff noted, the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has not forwarded the complaint to the Intelligence Committee.
There is a process for whistleblowers in such situations, one that has been established by federal law. A whistleblower must first submit a complaint to the IG, who determines whether it’s an “urgent concern” and “credible.” If so, the DNI “shall” forward the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees.
The idea here is that this process allows a member of the intelligence community to raise concerns about potential lawbreaking or other abuses with Congress, so it can exercise oversight over those abuses, while ensuring that classified information remains protected. This is done via the independent inspector general at first, insulating the whistleblower against agency-head retaliation, which is also provided for in the statute.
In this case, Schiff announced, the inspector general notified the committee that this whistleblower’s complaint did constitute an urgent concern and is credible — yet Maguire still hadn’t forwarded the complaint and relevant associated materials to the committee.
So Schiff called on the DNI to forward the materials, and if he failed to do that, to appear before Congress on Thursday.
Now Maguire has sent a new letter to Schiff once again refusing to forward the complaint.
But late last night the stakes on the mysterious complaint became huge.
The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.
And now things become clear. The DNI's office was almost certainly instructed by Bill Barr to ignore the law on the complaint because it directly involved Donald Trump doing something wildly inappropriate and quite possibly illegal to boot.
So the question is, who is the foreign leader, and what promise was made? Off the top of my head, I can think of five leaders who would fit the bill of getting a wild Trump promise:
- Russia's Vladimir Putin
- Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan
- Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky
- UK's Boris Johnson
- Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu
There's also our strongman in Venezuela, Juan Guaido as a possibility, but he's not leader of the country. Not yet, anyway, and not without, say, a promise of US military intervention. Still, a long shot.
At this level of the game, the whistleblower would definitely earn every bit of Trump's seething vengeance against those he sees as disloyal to him. It's also somebody who would have had access to Trump's conversations with foreign leaders, which means they have serious clearance and responsibilities. Finally, it's somebody who came forward to burn Trump on this, the promise being so outlandish that the person felt the need to essentially end their career and to risk facing almost certain Justice Department harassment and possible prosecution.
It's a mystery to be sure, but I bet we're going to get answers, and soon. Bonus exit question: is this the reason why former DNI Dan Coats resigned, because he was told by Barr to spike this whistleblower request, knowing full well what it was?
Leaks can be deadly, you know. Trump pissed off the wrong people.
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