White House Rebuffs Democrats as Whistle-Blower Case Snowballs
President Donald Trump dismissed suggestions that he had said anything “inappropriate” in a conversation with a foreign leader.
(Bloomberg) -- Democratic lawmakers accused intelligence officials of stonewalling on details of a whistle-blower’s complaint, even as President Donald Trump dismissed suggestions that he had said anything “inappropriate” in a conversation with a foreign leader.
The whistle-blower, a person in the U.S. intelligence community who hasn’t been publicly identified, raised questions about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, the Washington Post reported.
Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, said at a closed-door briefing with the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday that the whistle-blower’s complaint had focused on a specific sequence of events, according to a person in the room. Atkinson wouldn’t say whether the events involved Trump.
“Strange that with so many other people hearing or knowing of the perfectly fine and respectful conversation, that they would not have also come forward. Do you know the reason why they did not? Because there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!,” Trump said in a tweet on Friday.
Trump also called the unidentified whistle-blower “highly partisan,” without offering any evidence.
Representative Adam Schiff, the Intelligence panel’s chairman, said after the session with Atkinson that the Justice Department was involved in withholding the information on the whistle-blower’s allegations but he didn’t know if the White House also took part in keeping it from Congress.
“There is no privilege that covers whether the White House is involved in trying to stifle a whistle-blower complaint,” Schiff said, adding that the inspector general already has found “serious and credible evidence of wrongdoing.”
Ukraine Dispute
House Democratic committee chairmen said this month that they were investigating evidence that Trump and his lawyer and supporter Rudy Giuliani “appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s re-election campaign.” They cited a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Schiff and other Democratic House chairmen said Giuliani pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden -- a leading Democratic presidential contender -- and his son Hunter over their past dealings with the country and suggested that the administration threatened to withhold security assistance to the country.
Giuliani said Thursday night on CNN that he urged the Ukrainian government to investigate corruption “and I’m proud of it.” He said he didn’t know whether Trump had talked to Ukraine’s president about the issue but even if so “it doesn’t mean a damn” that a president would inquire about evidence of corruption.
“I don’t know if he did, and I wouldn’t care if he did,” Giuliani said. “He had every right to do it if he was the president of the United States.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor general said in May that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden or Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of one of the country’s biggest gas companies.
Next Steps
A next step in the whistle-blower investigation is set for Sept. 26, when Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Intelligence panel after initially resisting demands to do so. Maguire is also expected to meet at some point next week with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Jason Klitenic, the general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, had told Schiff in a letter on Tuesday that the law didn’t require that the complaint be turned over to Congress based on guidance by the Justice Department.
The refusal to provide the information has provoked the latest clash between congressional committees that are pursuing investigations of Trump and his administration, and a White House that largely refuses to cooperate.
Schiff has said he knows that the allegations are about “serious misconduct” that might involve the White House.
President’s Leeway
But a president has broad leeway in conducting foreign policy and in declassifying any information he chooses. That may have been reflected in advice from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that the action alleged by the whistle-blower doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of Atkinson, the inspector general, or qualify as information that he’s required to report to Congress, according to a Justice Department official who asked not to be identified.
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 reference in his tweet to a “heavily populated” call may reflect that discussions with foreign leaders are often monitored and recorded by multiple officials.
Trump has been criticized previously for his handling of discussions with foreign leaders.
In a May 2017 meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office, the president reportedly disclosed classified information about an Islamic State plot to use laptop computers as possible weapons on commercial aircraft. Later, he seemed to inadvertently confirm publicly that Israeli intelligence was the source of the sensitive material.
“I never mentioned the word or the name Israel, never mentioned during that conversation. They’re all saying I did,” Trump said during a visit to Jerusalem. “So you have another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel.”
--With assistance from Chris Strohm.
To contact the reporters on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net;Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, ;Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert, John Harney
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