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House Panel Subpoenas Intelligence Director Over Whistleblower

House Panel Subpoenas Intelligence Director Over Whistleblower

(Bloomberg) -- A U.S. House committee subpoenaed the acting director of national intelligence over a whistleblower complaint, saying that he was improperly withholding the complaint from Congress.

Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, issued the subpoena to the acting director, Joseph Maguire, “to compel the production of a whistleblower complaint that the Intelligence Community” inspector general “determined to be credible and a matter of ‘urgent concern,”’ the committee said in a statement on Friday night.

House Panel Subpoenas Intelligence Director Over Whistleblower

In a separate letter to Maguire, Schiff said, “This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the president and conceal from the committee information related to his possible ‘serious or flagrant’ misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.”

It was unclear what the complaint was about, or who filed it, but a subpoena of a high-ranking official like Maguire was highly unusual.

In the statement, the committee said that the complaint “involves confidentially and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the intelligence community” and that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “refused to rule out that the underlying conduct relates to an area of active investigation by the committee, raising serious concerns that the whistleblower complaint is being withheld to protect the president or other administration officials.”

The move by the committee comes as it has active inquiries on several fronts involving President Donald Trump’s financial dealings, and connections, and other matters tied more directly to the administration and intelligence agencies. Those include an ongoing look at the early stages of investigations into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

In the statement, the committee said that directors of national intelligence had “never prevented” a creditable whistleblower complaint from being forwarded to Congress.

Trump chose Maguire to become the acting director of national intelligence when Dan Coats stepped down last month. Maguire had been the chief of the National Counterterrorism Center.

The president’s first choice to replace Coats, Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas, withdrew from consideration following public scrutiny of his qualifications for the job, and his denunciation of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller at a House hearing over the summer.

Patrick Boland, a Schiff spokesman, declined to go into further detail beyond the statement.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday night.

To contact the reporters on this story: John Harney in Washington at jharney2@bloomberg.net;Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, John Harney

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