The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, says Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire may be illegally withholding information from Congress to protect Donald Trump or other White House officials.
On Friday, Schiff filed a subpoena to force Maguire to hand over the complaint from a whistleblower within the intelligence community. He made public two letters to the Acting Director, setting out his complaint of a possible coverup.
[Your action] raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible “serious or flagrant” misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.
Schiff explained that the intelligence community’s Inspector General determined that the whistleblower’s complaint, made on August 12, is “credible” and of “urgent concern”. The Inspector General notified Maguire on August 26, triggering a requirement that the Acting Director send the complaint within seven days to the House Intelligence Committee.
The Inspector General informed the House Intelligence Committee on September 9 of the existence of the complaint. But according to Schiff, Maguire still refused to hand it over, even after a formal letter from the Committee on September 10: “This marks the first time a Director of National Intelligence has ever sought to overrule the IC IG and conceal from Congress a whistleblower complaint.”
The Committee chair continues that Maguire has refused to say whether White House officials were involved in the decision to deny provision of the information, or to rule out that the “urgent concern” related to an active investigation by the House Committee. Meanwhile, in a a September 13 letter to Schiff, the Acting Director said that the complaint involves confidentially and potentially privileged communications by “persons outside the Intelligence Community”.
Schiff assesses:
The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials.
The subpoena compels Maguire to provide by Tuesday the whistleblower’s complaint, the Inspector General’s determination, and any documents over the decision to withhold the information. If the Acting Director does not comply, he must appear before the Committee on Thursday.
Maguire, then Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was appointed Acting Director last month. He replaced Dan Coats, who resigned as Director in July after Trump repeatedly chided US intelligence assessments which clashed with his views on North Korea, Russia, Iran, and other issues.