WASHINGTON — The acting US spy chief broke with President Donald Trump and some Republicans who’ve criticized and questioned the motives of an intelligence community whistleblower who filed a complaint against the President, when Joseph Maguire said Thursday that he believed the “whistleblower did the right thing” and “followed the law every step of the way.”
Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, also acknowledged at a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee that his office consulted with White House counsel after receiving a complaint detailing allegations about Trump’s communications with Ukraine, because calls with foreign leaders usually fall under executive privilege.
Maguire repeatedly defended his handling of the complaint, telling lawmakers he followed the law in an “unprecedented” situation despite claims to the contrary by Democrats that he infringed on their right to review the allegations.
LIVE UPDATES: Whistleblower’s complaint released
His appearance before the committee and a scheduled closed door briefing before the Senate panel, comes one day after lawmakers had their first chance to see the classified account that spurred Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry. The account was declassified and released Thursday morning.
Maguire said during his testimony he did not have the authority to waive the executive privilege that covered the conversation with Ukraine’s President and would not say whether he discussed the complaint with Trump.
“My conversations with the President, because I’m the Director of National Intelligence, are privileged and it would be inappropriate for me because it would destroy my relationship with the President in intelligence matters to divulge any of my conversations with the President of the United States,” Maguire said responding to a question from Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat.
When asked later in the hearing if Trump asked him to disclose the identity of the whistleblower, Maguire told lawmakers,” I can tell you emphatically, no.”
He also said no one else within the White House or DOJ asked him to identify the whistleblower.
White House consulted after complaint
Initially, Maguire seemed to waver about the chronology of events related to his handling of the complaint but ultimately told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that his office did seek guidance from the White House before raising the issue with the Office of Legal Counsel and Department of Justice, which advised he was not legally bound to provide it to the committee.
“Such calls are typically subject to executive privilege, as a result we consulted with the White House counsel’s office and were advised that much of the information of the complaint was in fact subject to executive privilege,” Maguire said. “A privilege that I do not have the authority to waive. Because of that we were unable to immediately share the details of the complaint with this committee.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has provided a redacted version to Congress that members can bring to an open hearing, a spokesperson said.
The anticipation ahead of Maguire’s testimony was also amplified by the White House’s decision to release a transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the leader of Ukraine that shows the President repeatedly pressed his counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden.
The conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is included in the whistleblower complaint, a source familiar with the situation said last week, a revelation that only raised more questions in the ongoing controversy.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the President had betrayed his oath of office and announced she is opening a formal impeachment inquiry, a move that has raised the stakes of this week’s events.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, started the hearing by accusing Trump of betraying his oath of office and compromising US national security for Trump’s “personal, political benefit,” referring to the conduct outlined in the call transcript released Wednesday.
“It forces us to confront the remedy the founders provided for such a flagrant abuse of office: impeachment. Now this matter would not have come to the attention of our committee or the nation’s attention without the courage of a single person- the whistleblower,” he said.
GOP members question whistleblower’s claim
Republicans, however, keyed in to the fact that the whistleblower acknowledged they did not have firsthand knowledge of most of the events described in the complaint.
“I was not a direct witness to most of the events described,” the whistleblower wrote, noting that they were aware of details in the complaint pertaining to Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian President because of “White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.”
But the public now has a way to test the accuracy of at least part of the whistleblower’s complaint by comparing the details related to that call to the transcript released by the White House Wednesday. By all appearances, the information is consistent.
In his testimony Thursday, Maguire continued to defend his handling of the whistleblower complaint, saying he was told by the Department of Justice it did “not meet the statutory requirement of ‘urgent concern,'” required to transmit to Congress and insisted that decision was “binding.”
“After reviewing the complaint, and the inspector general’s transmittal letter, the office of legal counsel determined that the complaint’s allegations do not meet the statutory requirement definition (of) legal, urgent concern, and found that I was not legally required to transmit the material to our oversight committee,” he added.
Last week, Maguire refused to comply with a deadline to hand over a whistleblower complaint to the House Intelligence Committee that had been deemed by the intelligence community inspector general to be “credible and urgent,” a conclusion that drove his push to provide Congress with the details and refer the matter to the Justice Department for consideration of criminality.
Maguire suggested during his testimony that he understood the importance of the complaint itself.
“I realized … full and well the importance of the allegation,” Maguire said, adding later, “when I saw that, I anticipated having to sit in front of some committee some time to discuss it.”
This story has been updated and will continue to update with developments Thursday.