Donald Trump Reportedly Committed ‘Multiple Acts’ To Trigger Mysterious Whistleblower Complaint
As The Inquisitr reported last week, an intelligence agency official in August filed a whistleblower complaint that appeared to involve Donald Trump, and something the president had done that led the inspector general of the United States Intelligence Community to label the complaint “urgent.” But Trump-appointed Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has refused to hand the whistleblower’s information over to congressional investigators.
On Thursday, as The Inquisitr reported, media reports revealed that the complaint involved something that Trump had “promised” to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. That promise may have involved Trump’s attempt to force the Ukraine government to dig up damaging information on Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden.
But later on Thursday, The New York Times published an even more stunning report, revealing that Trump’s “promise” to Zelensky was only one of several potential offenses committed by the president that led the still-unidentified whistleblower to file the complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general.
Michael Atkinson, the inspector general, testified to Congress in a closed session on Thursday. But according to sources familiar with Atkinson’s testimony who spoke to The New York Times, testified that the whistleblower complaint “involved multiple actions” by Trump. But Atkinson refused to discuss the actual contents of the complaint, according to The Times.
While recent reports have indicated that the complaint involved a specific phone call between Trump and another world leader, the New York Times report said that “no single communication was at the root of the complaint,” according to the sources who spoke to the paper.
In his testimony, Atkinson said that he disagreed with Maguire’s refusal to provide congressional investigators with the whistleblower’s information, according to The Washington Post.
While Maguire claims that he is prevented from sharing the complaint with Congress because it involves a person not inside the intelligence community, Atkinson told Congress that he believed the complaint did, in fact, fall under the jurisdiction of the Director of National Intelligence and that therefore Maguire should be required to turn it over.
But the decision to hold back the whistleblower complaint was not Maguire’s alone. According to a CNN report on Thursday, Maguire’s instructions came straight from the White House.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff had previously said that he could not determine whether the White House was involved in stonewalling Congress on the whistleblower complaint. However, CNN reported that the White House advised Maguire that “Trump isn’t governed by laws covering intelligence whistleblowers.”
Schiff said on Thursday that his committee may file a lawsuit in order to force Maguire to turn over the whistleblower complaint, according to the New York Times report.
