Democrats claim new momentum from intelligence watchdog testimony

Source: The Hill | October 4, 2019 | Cristina Marcos, Mike Lillis and Maggie Miller

Democrats claimed to find new momentum Friday in their impeachment inquiry into President Trump after the top watchdog of the nation’s intelligence community briefed lawmakers on his investigation into allegations that Trump sought foreign help to boost his 2020 campaign.

During nearly seven hours of testimony to members of the House Intelligence Committee, Michael Atkinson, the inspector general (IG) of the intelligence community, outlined the details of his probe into the complaint from an anonymous government whistleblower at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

The whistleblower alleged that Trump had threatened to withhold U.S. military assistance to Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky launched an anti-corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s chief political adversaries heading into next year’s election.

Democrats on the Intelligence panel provided few details of Atkinson’s testimony, but said it confirmed crucial — and damning — components of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky phone call, a summary of which was released last week by the White House.

“While we cannot get into the substance, we explored with the IG through documents and testimony the reasons why he found the whistleblower complaint to be both urgent and credible,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said afterward in a statement. “Now that we have all seen the call record, we can see that the IG’s determination was correct in both respects.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence panel, said Democrats are getting plenty of help from the president himself as they pursue their impeachment probe. He pointed to Trump’s entreaty Thursday for both Ukraine and China to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter.

“Every day that goes by the president further implicates himself. Yesterday, publicly, he asked the Chinese for help,” Himes said. “The more we learn, the more we learn that everything that was in that whistleblower’s complaint has corroboration.”

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