Washington: The US intelligence watchdog briefed lawmakers Thursday about the handling of a whistleblower complaint on alleged behaviour by President Donald Trump, and a senior Democrat expressed alarm that the administration refuses to share the complaint with Congress.
The allegations, rejected by Donald Trump as ‘presidential harassment’, have set lawmakers on a collision course with the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which is refusing to share the details. It has raised suspicions that the top spy official might be improperly protecting the president.
According to a report by ‘The Washington Post’, which cited two unnamed former US officials, a complaint filed by a US intelligence official stemmed from Trump’s communications with a foreign leader and a ‘promise’ allegedly made by the president. The foreign leader involved was not identified by the newspaper.
The ‘New York Times’ also reported Thursday that ‘at least part of’ the whistleblower’s complaint ‘deals with’ Ukraine. The newspaper cited two people familiar with the situation.
Both newspapers have mentioned that Donald Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – who was elected in May – about two weeks before the complaint was filed.
The whistleblower had filed a complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community (IC IG), Michael Atkinson, who acknowledged he considered it a credible matter of ‘urgent concern’ that necessitated notifying congressional oversight committees.
But during a three-hour closed-door briefing, Atkinson told the House Intelligence Committee that the acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, has barred him from providing details of the complaint to Congress.
“That whole purpose is being frustrated here because the Director of National Intelligence has made the unprecedented decision not to share the complaint with Congress,” the committee’s chairman, Democrat Adam Schiff, told reporters after the briefing.
“We do not know, because we cannot get an answer to the question, about whether the White House is also involved in preventing this information from coming to Congress,” Schiff added.
Trump however dismissed the concerns on Twitter. He called the the story ‘fake news’, and said that any time he speaks with foreign leaders over phone he is well aware that there are likely ‘many people’ listening from US agencies.
“Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call’, Trump asked.
AFP
