Still shan’t
The issue of the Acting Director of National Intelligence refusing to hand the whistleblower complaint over to the relevant Congressional committee is still an issue.
On Friday, House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of withholding a “credible” whistleblower complaint — made by someone within the intelligence community — from Congress.
It’s not usual to go public on this kind of thing – and it’s even less usual for a DNI to refuse to deal with the House Intelligence Committee.
Congress appears to have only learned of the whistleblower’s existence after Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson deemed the complaint of “urgent concern” and sent a letter to Congress informing it of the situation.
The allegation could suggest a breach of federal statutes, and Schiff’s decision to publicize the matter suggests the situation is an urgent one.
It seems quite grim – because it’s too much like a coup. Trump is having way too much success stonewalling Congress. He’s not a guy you can trust to do that for sound reasons.
According to Schiff’s letter, the whistleblower first sent a “disclosure intended for Congress” to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General on Aug. 12.
That triggered a two-week deadline for Atkinson to review and assess the complaint.
At the period’s end — on Aug. 26 — Atkinson purportedly reached his conclusion, finding that the whistleblower had made a credible allegation that met a legal standard of “urgent concern.” He then submitted a copy of the disclosure and “accompanying materials” to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, beginning another seven-day countdown to the deadline for Maguire to forward the information to the congressional intelligence committees.
This is where things get hairy. Schiff alleges that Maguire’s office has withheld the complaint from Congress, disregarding the law.
In other words refusing to obey the law. Breaking the law. Committing a crime.
The intel community watchdog’s letter launched an escalating battle between Schiff and the DNI. One day later, on Sept. 10, House Intel demanded that Maguire produce a full copy of the whistleblower complaint, the inspector general’s evaluation of the complaint, and any communications about the complaint between the national intelligence director’s office and “other Executive Branch actors including the White House.”
Schiff writes that on Friday — Sept. 13 — Maguire replied, denying Schiff’s request. That evening, the Intelligence Committee chair blew open the situation with a public press release, and spent part of Sunday on CBS’s Face The Nation discussing the issue.
Read back. It wasn’t a request, it was a demand – Maguire doesn’t get to refuse.
The situation follows on a brazen strategy by the Trump administration to stonewall congressional subpoenas at virtually every turn, and is playing out as another whistleblower drama — involving potential misconduct in how the IRS is treating Trump’s taxes — unfolds in the shadows.
In other words it’s a slow-moving coup. Trump doesn’t get to “stonewall” congressional subpoenas. He’s carrying on like a dictator, and he has no legal right to do that. He’s succeeding because his allies in Congress are letting him.
I might be missing something here, but if the whistleblower sent the disclosure to Atkinson, why doesn’t Atkinson now bypass Maguire and hand the materials to Congress himself?
Hmm. Good question. My guess is that it must be something to do with rules about chains of command or of who can see what. Of course, Trump and his stooges are shredding every rule they can get at, but that doesn’t mean Inspectors General will follow suit.
But yeah. Why do they get to break the rules? They don’t, but in blunt reality they still have that Senate majority, so nobody can currently stop them. It drives me CRAZY.
All you really need to break the rules is to have no one who will enforce them. Trump, coming out of business class, almost certainly knows that. The polluting corporations have violated environmental regulations for decades, knowing the odds that anything will happen to them are small. When they do occasionally get called out (usually because some nonentity managed to be heard long enough to create a minor scandal), they know the resulting punishment will not amount to enough to make more than a small dent in their operations.
Trump has no doubt soaked most of this up throughout his life. He has cheated and lied and stolen and broken things, and only rarely gets stopped. So why would he do anything else?
Just like the Nazis in the 1930s, there is a cabal of people actively, purposefully and arrogantly assuming their right to reign supreme over the nation, dismantling the machinery of democracy piece by piece by intimidation, cronyism, and back then, outright murder. Those lower down the chain of command found themselves blocked from reporting or prosecuting wrongdoing by their seduced superiors. In the meantime, the left were too busy fighting amongst themselves to notice what was going on until it was too late to stop them.
The Democrats in Congress need to act to prevent history rhyming. There is only so much time left before it is too late to stop the destruction of democracy.