Democrats seized on the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s Ukraine call to advance their impeachment drive.
The nation’s top intelligence official battled with lawmakers on Thursday after acknowledging that he consulted with the White House counsel’s office after the intelligence community’s inspector general informed him of an “urgent” whistleblower complaint involving President Donald Trump.
The comments stunned members of the House Intelligence Committee, who grilled Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire over his handling of the complaint — particularly his refusal to immediately disclose it to Congress, as required by law when the inspector general deems it to be “urgent.”
“I am aware that this is unprecedented,” Maguire said of a president’s involvement in such a whisteblower complaint. “This has never happened before. This is a unique situation.”
He also expressed open disagreement with Trump’s criticisms of the whistleblower as a partisan hack and a traitor.
“Absolutely not,” Maguire said when Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asked him if he believed the whistleblower was loyal to another country. “I think the whistleblower did the right thing.”
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The nation’s top intelligence official is being grilled by lawmakers over his handling of a whistleblower complaint that could lead to the impeachment of Donald Trump https://t.co/4tIfz8y3zI
— POLITICO (@politico) September 26, 2019
Schiff gets Maguire to acknowledge that he went to the White House first when his office received the whistleblower complaint. Maguire says he had to determine whether the WH would invoke executive privilege, but also acknowledges after much pressing that they never did.
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 26, 2019
BLUF: POTUS cannot pressure foreign leaders to get dirt on his domestic political opponents for his personal (not USG) OPPO investigation. You just can't.
This saga is fundamentally simple in its stupidity. Keep the narrative straightforward so all Americans can understand it.
— John Schindler (@20committee) September 25, 2019
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