Donald Trump angrily proclaimed his innocence amid a mounting furor over his director of national intelligence blocking Congress from knowing about a whisteblower’s complaint alleging high-level misconduct – and an invesatigation whether the president tried to use Ukraine to damage Joe Biden.
The president called the complaint ‘highly partisan,’ suggesting he may know the identity of the person who made the disclosure to the inspector general of the intelligence community on August 12.
He also appeared to confirm that it was about his dealings with a ‘certain foreign leader’ – who has been reported by the Washington Post to be Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
He is facing being sued by Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who said he was prepared to go to court to try to force the Trump administration to open up about the complaint.
The complaint has been stonewalled since Labor Day when a legal deadline for it to be passed to Congress ended but the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, did not comply, claiming it was not covered by whisteblowing legislation for members of the intelligence community – workers or contractors for the 17 spy agencies.
Schiff and two other Democratic-led committees are already investigating whether Trump tried to pressure Zelensky, in a July 25 phone call, to mount a prosecution of Joe Biden’s son Hunter on corruption charges and used military aid as leverage, as well as involving his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
On Friday morning, Trump tweeted: ‘The Radical Left Democrats and their Fake News Media partners, headed up again by Little Adam Schiff, and batting Zero for 21 against me, are at it again!
‘They think I may have had a “dicey” conversation with a certain foreign leader based on a “highly partisan” whistleblowers statement.
‘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!’
His protestations came as Democrats vowed court action to force the complaint into the open.
‘The inspector general has said this cannot wait,’ said Schiff Thursday, describing the administration’s blockade as an unprecedented departure from law. ‘There’s an urgency here that I think the courts will recognize.’
Schiff, a favorite Trump target, told reporters the acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, has made the ‘unprecedented decision not to share the complaint with Congress,’ despite whistleblower laws requiring reporting to Congress of legitimate complaints.
‘The whole point of the whistleblower statute is not only to encourage those to report problems, abuses, violations of laws, but also to have a legal mechanism to do so and not to disclose classified information — because there’s no other remedy,’ Schiff said after lawmakers grilled the IG for the intelligence community in private.
The complaint was blown partially into the open Thursday night when the Washington Post reported that it concerned Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Three congressional committees have previously announced a probe into whether Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani took actions in order ‘to pressure the government of Ukraine to assist the President’s reelection campaign.’
President Donald Trump spoke to the president of Ukraine on July 25, days before a whistleblower filed a complaint about a promise he made to the head of an unidentified country
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) blasted the Director of National Intelligence’s decision not to share a whistleblower complaint reported to involve President Donald Trump despite statutes that mandate reporting to Congress
Shortly after the Washington Post disclosure, Giuliani admitted in the course of a freewheeling and at times bitterly personal interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he had asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s dealings there when he was vice-president.
Biden’s surviving son Hunter – now a publicly recovering drug addict – was a board member of a gas company in Ukraine which faced allegations of corruption.
Giuliani initially denied doing so, only to reverse himself seconds later.
‘Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?’ Cuomo asked Giuliani.
‘No, actually I didn’t. I asked the Ukraine to investigate the allegations that there was interference in the election of 2016 by the Ukrainians for the benefit of Hillary Clinton, for which there is already a court finding,’ Giuliani responded.
‘You never asked anything about Hunter Biden? You never asked anything about Joe Biden and his role with the prosecutor?’ Cuomo asked.
‘The only thing I asked about Joe Biden is to get to the bottom of how it was that Lutsenko, who was appointed, dismissed the case,’ Giuliani said.
‘So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?’ Cuomo pressed.
‘Of course I did,’ Giuliani said.
The former mayor then said that while he ‘didn’t ask’ that Biden be investigated specifically, he did ask the Ukrainian government ‘to look into the allegations that related to my client, which tangentially involved Joe Biden in a massive bribery scheme.’
Giuliani alleged that the former vice president ‘bribed the president of the Ukraine in order to fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.’
There has been no official confirmation that the complaint was about Ukraine or specifically about Trump pressuring its new leader – president – to carry out a political hit on a Democratic rival.
The Democratic-run committees asked the White House for records of the Trump’s July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Zelenksy.
That call took place days before the whistleblower filed an August 12 complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community, charging Trump made a promise to a still unidentified foreign leader.
Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is a lawyer for Trump, told CNN host Chris Cuomo in a tense exchange that he did, in fact, ask Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden.
He also called CNN ‘corrupt’ for failing to investigate Biden’s alleged ties to the nephew of Whitey Bulger, the longtime Boston-area mafia figure.
Giluiani is likely referring to James Bulger, who heads Thornton Group, a Massachusetts-based consulting group.
James Bulger’s father Bill is a Boston Democrat who was president of the Massachusetts senate and the University of Massachusetts while his brother was a crime lord. He was forced out of public life in 2003 for refusing to testify about whether he communicated with Whitey Bulger while the killer was on the run.
Hunter Biden and James Bulger were among a group of well-connected Americans, including Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, who launched a private equity firm that mad a series of investments in China more than 10 years ago.
Conservative author Peter Schweizer claims in his book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends that the firm made a deal with the state-owned Bank of China to create a $1 billion joint investment fund.
The deal took place in 2013, when Joe Biden was vice president and Kerry was secretary of state.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China are thought by some to be one reason why Joe Biden has held a favorable view toward economic ties with the Asian power.
Giuliani also complained about the lack of coverage of the Bidens’ ties to Ukraine.
When Joe Biden was vice president, his son, Hunter, held a directorship for a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings.
In 2014, Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, was being investigated for corrupt dealings involving the business.
A year later, Viktor Shokin was appointed Ukraine’s top prosecutor, thus inheriting the investigations into Burisma.
Conservatives on social media have noted in recent months that Biden threatened to withhold foreign aid from Ukraine if the government didn’t fire Shokin.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, appeared on Chris Cuomo’s CNN talk show on Thursday. After first denying that he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden, the former New York mayor reversed himself, saying: ‘Of course I did’
Giuliani wants Ukraine to investigate the former vice president’s alleged role in a Ukrainian investigation into a gas company in which his son, Hunter, held a directorship. Joe Biden (right) and Hunter Biden (left) are seen above in Washington, DC in April 2016
In 2014, Viktor Shokin (left), Ukraine’s top prosecutor, investigated the owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden held a directorship. Joe Biden led international efforts to have Shokin fired. He was replaced by Yuriy Lutsenko (right), who dropped the investigation into Burisma’s owner
Some have gone further, spreading a conspiracy theory which states that Biden had Shokin fired in order to protect his son Hunter’s business interests at Burisma.
While Biden did threaten to withhold $1billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine unless Shokin was fired, he did so with the support of other Western countries and international institutions who saw Shokin as someone who was not tough enough on corruption.
Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, dropped the probe into Zlochevsky, who has denied all wrongdoing.
The potential for that to be linked to Trump exploded into the open this week as the Washington Post, CNN and New York Times broke stories on the whistleblower complaint.
The Times reported that the whistleblower’s claim involved ‘multiple acts going beyond a single pledge to a world leader’ – a potentially key piece of information about what country it refers to.
That would seem to hold up in the case of Ukraine, given a series of contacts about the issue in recent months.
Ukraine’s president pushed back against reports that Trump held back the military funds while demanding a probe that could help his presidential campaign.
‘Now we can say we have very good relations with the US because now we will get not only $250 million but [an additional] $140 million,’ he said, the Independent reported. ‘When you are waiting for $250 million have the possibility to get $390 million, I like this sort of relationship,’ Zelensky said. ‘I am sure we will have a meeting in the White House, because I was invited,’ he added.
The focus on Ukraine – a country whose politics already featured in the 2016 elections due to jailed Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s work on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch – came amid a furor over the whistleblower story.
The Director of National Intelligence on Thursday refused to provide details to Congress on a whistleblower’s ‘urgent’ claim about a secret promise President Trump reportedly made a foreign leader, lawmakers said.
The IG took the position, which Democrats cast as stonewalling, after consulting with White House and top Justice Department lawyers, it was reported Thursday.
The decision to hold back the information from Congress came after the White House weighed in, CNN reported.
The White House Counsel and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel were both involved in the decision and vetted it with the Director of National Intelligence, according to the report.
It was not immediately clear if the White House lawyers told the DNI to assert a privilege and hold back the information. In other Democratic congressional investigations, White House and Justice Department lawyers have had administration officials assert an ‘absolute immunity’ from having to testify.
Schiff’s complaints came after the IG, Michael Atkinson, who he has previously said called the matter ‘urgent,’ declined to confirm to lawmakers public reports about the whistleblower’s complaint.
Pressed by lawmakers, he told them he could not confirm the whistleblower’s stunning complaint about the president.
The New York Times reported that Atkinson did allow that the complaint involved multiple acts going beyond a single pledge to a world leader.
The DNI’s office wrote lawmakers that the whistleblower complaint ‘involves confidential and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community.’
Schiff blasted the push-back and threatened to sue. ‘There is no privilege that covers whether the White House is involved in trying to stifle a whistleblower complaint,’ he said.
His complaint followed closed meetings with the IG.
The IG wrote Schiff Sept. 9, explaining that he determined the complaint met the definition of an ‘urgent concern.’ But he also revealed a split with the DNI, who was not transmitting the information to Congress. The Acting DNI’s decision ‘does not appear to be consistent with past practice,’ he wrote.
Amid the lack of hard public information, speculation swirled around which leader the president might have made a promise to. Immediate speculation focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump spoke to by phone in a call where a brief White House readout said they discussed Siberian forest fires.
President Trump on Thursday denied making an ‘inappropriate’ comment to a foreign leader in a phone call that formed the basis of a reported whistleblower complaint – saying he would know better than to blurt out something inappropriate when others were on the line.
President Donald Trump denied Thursday that he made an ‘inappropriate’ comment to a foreign leader in a phone call that formed the basis of a reported whistleblower complaint
Schiff told reporters the acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, has made the ‘unprecedented decision not to share the complaint with Congress.’ The New York Times reported that Atkinson did allow that the complaint involved multiple acts going beyond a single pledge to a world leader
One of the paper’s sources said Trump made a ‘promise’ so egregious that it prompted a submission to the intelligence community’s inspector general.
Two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter told the Washington Post about the episode.
One of the officials said the promise was made in a phone call. The name of the foreign leader and the subject of the discussion is unknown. Trump is known to have been in contact with more than a half dozen foreign leaders at the time of the August 12 complaint, though.
Trump was vacationing at his Bedminister, N.J. golf club at the time. He spoke to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that morning and on two other occasions in the days prior.
The U.S. president also had calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the preceding weeks.
A White House readout of Trump’s call with Putin said they discussed the wildfires in Siberia and trade. But a Kremlin statement suggested they spoke about those topics and normalizing relations between the two nations.
Trump had a July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Three House Democratic committee chairman, including Schiff, are probing alleged ‘attempts to manipulate the Ukrainian justice system to benefit the President’s re-election campaign and target a possible political opponent,’ and have sought records and transcripts of the call, as well as interactions between Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the Ukrainian government.
Ned Price, a former CIA operative and National Security Council spokesman for Barack Obama, pointed to the discrepancy and guessed in a Tuesday evening tweet that the Putin call inspired the unknown whistleblower to come forward.
The president also met with the Emir of Qatar Tamim Bin Hamad Al Tani, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte just before the whistleblower complaint and exchanged letters with North Korean chairman Kim Jong un.
The scuffle has further implications beyond who Trump spoke to and what he said: the director of national intelligence’s office did not disclose the whistleblower complaint to Congress. Disclosure of such complaints is mandatory.
The whistleblower complaint was first submitted on August 12 to Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson, says House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.
Last week, Schiff, a California Democrat, accused acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire of improperly withholding the information.
Federal law directs the DNI to transmit a whistleblower complaint to the Congressional intelligence committees within seven days if it is deemed ‘an urgent concern’ by the ICIG.
However, Schiff says Maguire failed to transmit the complaint to Congress by September 2 as the law requires.
On August 26, the ICIG deemed the complaint ‘not only credible, but urgent’ and forwarded it to DNI Maguire, yet it never made its way to Congress, Schiff says.
Rep. Adam Schiff (left) has accused acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire (right) of improperly withholding a whistleblower complaint from Congress
In a September 10 letter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Schiff demanded the document, and implied that it was being concealed at the direction of the White House to avoid making administration officials look bad.
‘The Committee’s recent experience has heightened concern of improper White House efforts to influence your office and the Intelligence Community,’ Schiff wrote.
But Maguire refused, saying that the complaint involves confidential and potentially privileged communications, Schiff said.
Schiff said that Maguire further argued that the complaint was about someone who was not within the intelligence community, and that the whistleblower statute thus did not apply.
On September 13, Schiff issued a subpoena demanding a copy of the complaint, giving a September 17 deadline.
Maguire refused to respond to the subpoena, triggering Schiff to call a hearing on the matter for Thursday.
Schiff says the committee will ‘do everything necessary’ to get the complaint.
‘The ICIG determined that this complaint is both credible and urgent, and that it should be transmitted to Congress under the clear letter of the law. The Committee places the highest importance on the protection of whistleblowers and their complaints to Congress,’ Schiff said in a statement on Wednesday.