Whistle-Blower Timeline Central to Battle Between Trump, Schiff
The events surrounding the House investigation, Trump’s phone call and the whistle-blower complaint make for a complex timeline.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump and his allies are seeking to sow doubt about Democrats‘ impeachment inquiry by suggesting that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff orchestrated the whistle-blower complaint that touched off the investigation.
Schiff’s aides have flatly denied suggestions of coordination, and the attorneys for the unnamed intelligence official denied that the California Democrat had any contact with them or the whistle-blower.
The aides and the lawyers all said the early contact between the whistle-blower and an intelligence committee staffer were standard practice for handling such cases and only offered guidance on next steps.
But the question of when Schiff learned of the substance of the whistle-blower’s complaint regarding a July 25 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president has become a central element of the White House defense.
“We need to know what Chairman Adam Schiff and his team knew, when they knew it, and what (if any) interactions or coordination he and his team had with this whistleblower before the complaint became abnormally public,” Republican Representative Mark Meadows, a close Trump ally, tweeted. “This story stinks to high heaven.”
The sequence of events surrounding the complaint is likely to be a focus of questioning on Friday when the Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson gives a closed deposition to the committees on intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight. He was the official who received the whistle-blower’s formal complaint on Aug. 12 and passed it on to Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
The events surrounding the House investigation, Trump’s phone call and the whistle-blower complaint make for a complex timeline.
Initial Investigation
Schiff, along with the chairmen of House committees on foreign affairs and oversight, had been working since June on an investigation into Rudy Giuliani’s actions regarding Ukraine. This, in part, had been prompted by media accounts generated by Giuliani himself, acting as Trump’s personal attorney.
Sometime after Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an intelligence community officer started raising questions about a potential abuse of power and White House cover-up. The officer first went to the top lawyer at the person’s own agency, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed people.
Around the same time, the officer consulted with a staff member of the House Intelligence Committee, who advised the person to file an official complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general and to get a lawyer.
A person familiar with the case said the individual was seeking guidance on what to do next.
On Aug. 12, the officer presented a formal whistle-blower complaint to Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, according to documents released by the Intelligence Committee. In a letter to Maguire dated Aug. 26, Atkinson wrote that he determined it qualifies as an “urgent concern” under the law and “appears credible.”
‘Regular Occurrence’
Schiff’s aides say he had no hand in the origins of the whistle-blower complaint, and no advance knowledge of the specific accusations that were made in it. His spokesman, Patrick Boland, said the whistle-blower had no direct contact with Schiff, and the committee chairman does not know the person’s identity.
“Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” Boland said in a statement Wednesday. “This is a regular occurrence, given the committee’s unique oversight role and responsibilities.”
Boland said the Intelligence Committee didn’t receive the whistle-blower’s official complaint until the day before Maguire testified in a committee hearing on Sept. 27.
Lawyers for the still unknown whistle-blower said there was no contact between the legal team and Congress until nearly a month after the whistle-blower complaint was submitted to Atkinson on Aug. 12.
“I can unequivocally state that neither any member of the legal team nor the whistle-blower has ever met or spoken with Congressman Schiff about this matter,” said one of the lawyers, Mark Zaid, in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
Intelligence Chairmen
The whistle-blower’s official complaint included a letter to Schiff and Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, laying out the accusations.
That letter, however, was not immediately forwarded to the two chairman.
Another of the whistle-blower’s lawyers, Andrew Bakaj, wrote to Burr and Schiff on Sept. 9 to say that Atkinson in August informed him that while the complaint was determined to be credible and urgent, “my client’s disclosure will not be transmitted to Congress because the Acting Director of National Intelligence views the matter as ‘outside of the scope’ of the applicable whistle-blower statute.”
But Schiff already knew that the complaint existed, even if he didn’t know its exact contents.
On Sept. 13, four days after receiving the letters from Atkinson and Bakaj, Schiff announced a subpoena to compel Maguire to share the complaint with Congress.
Schiff has said he had asked for the complaint on Sept. 10, before deciding he’d have to subpoena it.
In that announcement, Schiff does not mention any prior knowledge of the complaint. He does state: ”A month ago, a whistle-blower within the intelligence community lawfully filed a complaint regarding a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law, or deficiency within the responsibility or authority of the Director of National Intelligence.”
At about the same time as that announcement, Schiff informed other members of his committee about the complaint.
Over the next 10 days, media accounts trickled out some of the details of the complaint, and Schiff continued to express outrage that Congress had not yet received it.
Top House Democratic staffers were instructed to not acknowledge or even suggest to reporters that they could confirm or had any knowledge of the complaint’s contents.
To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton
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