Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff at the hearing, September 26, 2019
Today’s hearing on the whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump’s solicitation of political assistance from Ukrainian officials sparked more questions than answers for Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee. After about three hours of questioning Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire, Chairman Schiff made clear this whistleblower’s account deserves a full investigation.
“We’ll be working through the recess,” Schiff said in a press conference after the hearing. “The complaint gives us a pretty good road map of allegations we need to investigate. There [are] a whole host of people apparently who have knowledge of these events that the whistleblower makes reference to.”
Schiff said he plans to bring those witnesses in to testify and said his committee has already requested a hearing with the inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson.
Maguire started his temporary DNI role just days before Atkinson informed him of the complaint, which was described as “credible and urgent.” Maguire said at the hearing that he does not know the identity of the whistleblower, but has no reason to believe that they were acting unjustly.
Most of the questions focused not on the substance of the complaint, but the procedures the DNI followed after receiving it. “I believe the whistleblower is operating in good faith and in the law,” Maguire said before the committee. “[They] followed the steps every step of the way.”
Maguire added the whistleblower “did the right thing” and followed protocol to report President Donald Trump’s actions, which in part include at least one phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It’s now known through a “loose transcript” of the call that Trump was “asking for a favor” from his Ukrainian counterpart to dig up “dirt” on Joe Biden and his son. It was also suggested that this information, regardless of whether or not it was true, would be a factor in the United States delivering military aid to Ukraine.
This conversation could be interpreted as the U.S. president asking a foreign power to interfere in a U.S. election. It is also not the first time Trump would be accused of this crime. As it is outlined in the Mueller report, Trump’s campaign team sought the assistance of a Russian lawyer, who promised “dirt” on then-opponent Hillary Clinton. However, Trump was not charged with any crimes in relation to that meeting.
Because the complaint directly concerns President Trump’s actions, Maguire was forced into linguistic knots over his decision to take the whistleblower’s account first to the White House counsel for review before sharing it with Congress. Through questioning by Representative André Carson (D-IN), it was made clear that this was the first time any such whistleblower complaint was withheld from Congress in this way.
The first page of the whistleblower’s complaint, which was made public the morning of the hearing, states that “the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” Echoing Trump’s press conference yesterday, Maguire testified that the complaint and call with the Ukrainian leader did not involve election interference.
Maguire called the situation “unprecedented” many times in the hearing and cited his concerns over what would fall under executive privilege as a reason he had to go to the White House counsel first. But that was not a good enough justification for many of the representatives. Schiff questioned if the “conflict of interest” concerned Maguire. Many more asked why Maguire did not publicly defend the whistleblower when the president began berating them on Twitter.
The New York Times astonishingly decided to release information about the identity of the whistleblower, just a few minutes after President Trump intimated that “in the old days” spies would be “dealt with” in an unidentified harsh manner.
The Intelligence Committee did get Maguire to confirm that his office will protect the whistleblower through the Whistleblower Protection Act. And legal representatives for the whistleblower are being given the clearances necessary to prepare them and their client to also testify before the Intelligence Committee.
That process could be lengthy, but investigations from the House seem to be the only clear avenue for any semblance of holding the White House accountable. When Maguire received the complaint, it was also sent to the Department of Justice, which decided it did not break any laws, including promoting foreign interference in a U.S. election. That means the FBI has not investigated these allegations.
“At the end of the day, what is alleged in this whistleblower complaint goes to the heart of the president’s oath of office, that he faithfully execute the laws of the country, that he defend the constitution,” Schiff said to the press after the hearing. “It is hard to imagine a more fundamental abuse of that office. And so we are determined to get to the bottom of this.”
