Top Intelligence Official Testifies to Congress
President Donald Trump accuses the whistleblower of committing treason. (Flickr)
Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, testified to Congress on September 26 amid an explosive whistle-blower complaint alleging that President Donald Trump abused his power for personal political gain, according to the New York Times.
The whistle-blower’s complaint concerns a July telephone call where Trump sought to implicitly pressure newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate the activities of presidential candidate and former-Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, by withholding military assistance to Ukraine.
The whistle-blower, who the New York Times reports is a career CIA official with significant knowledge of Ukrainian politics, filed a report with the Intelligence Community Inspector General. He delivered the report to Maguire just days after Maguire assumed the position of director.
After consulting with the Department of Justice and the Office of the White House Counsel, Maguire declined to share the complaint with Congress. However, the inspector general appeared in front of Congress in a closed session in mid-September, and the White House has since declassified both the whistle-blower’s complaint and the reconstructed transcript of the July telephone call.
While the transcript, which is not a word-for-word record of the phone call, does not explicitly mention U.S. security assistance in exchange for performing an investigation into Biden, Trump did ask Zelenskiy to “do us a favor” and look into the matter.
The president also mentioned Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr by name, asking Zelenskiy to speak to them about the investigation. According to the whistle-blower, White House staff ordered the reconstructed call transcript uploaded to a separate system used for sensitive national security information. The whistle-blower suggested that this action shows the White House “understood the gravity” of the call. Senior Democrats have seized on this as evidence of a “cover-up,” according to Politico.
CNN reported on September 24 that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump’s conduct in the wake of the complaint, saying that “actions taken to date by the President have seriously violated the Constitution.”
As details about the whistle-blower complaint became public, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 43 percent of voters are for Trump’s impeachment and an equal number against.
One Republican Congressman, Representative Mark Amodei (R-NV) has backed impeachment inquiry so far. Politico reports that Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) also called the president’s behavior “troubling” and “inappropriate.”
Trump lashed out at the claims on September 26, accusing the whistleblower of being “almost a spy,” and suggested that there should be a way of “stopping [impeachment], maybe legally through the courts.”