WASHINGTON -- Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire on Thursday defended his decision not to immediately share with Congress a complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower alleging that President Donald Trump used his office to solicit interference by a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign.
Maguire told the House Intelligence Committee during three hours of testimony that he consulted about the complaint with officials at the Justice Department and the White House, but was not able to turn over the document until it was resolved whether it contained material protected by executive privilege.
Democrats hammered the intelligence chief for his decision, arguing that the law explicitly demands that the director of national intelligence "shall" transmit whistleblower complaints to the intelligence oversight committees.
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Maguire repeatedly stressed that the nature of the complaint was extraordinary and presented unique considerations. Much of the complaint rests on a phone call that Trump had on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump offered U.S. assistance in any investigation of Trump's political opponents, including the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden's son Hunter served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that came under official scrutiny there, though Hunter Biden has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
A redacted version of the complaint was released shortly before Maguire's testimony.
Lawmakers asked why Maguire sought the guidance of executive branch lawyers when the law does not require him to do so.
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"I just thought it would be prudent to have another opinion," Maguire said, noting that when he saw the complaint, he was struck by how much of it focused on Trump's phone call with a foreign leader.
Maguire said he first sought guidance from the White House counsel's office and next from the office of legal counsel at the Justice Department. Officials then raised the possibility that the complaint could be covered by executive privilege, but no one reached a definitive ruling on that, Maguire said.
The office of legal counsel also found that the complaint did not meet the statutory definition of an "urgent concern" under the whistleblower law. The law says that such matters are supposed to be turned over to Congress.
The inspector general ultimately informed Congress about the existence of the complaint, but not its substance, a decision that Maguire said he supported. Inspector General Michael Atkinson also spent part of his day Thursday on Capitol Hill in a closed meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"It was not stonewalling. I was not receiving direction from anybody," Maguire said. "I have to comply with the way the law is, not the way some people would like it to be."
Maguire expressed "my support for the whistleblower," who he said had followed regular procedures for raising a concern with the inspector general. He said the whistleblower and the inspector general "have acted in good faith throughout. I have every reason to believe that they have done everything by the book and followed the law."
He said he doesn't know the person's identity, and no one in the administration has asked him to learn it.
Republicans largely focused on questioning the veracity of the whistleblower's allegations, much of which is secondhand but sourced to U.S. officials.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the committee's ranking Republican, derided the complaint as "fake news" and accused Democrats and journalists of a conspiracy to gin up baseless allegations against Trump. He called the complaint and media coverage of it an "information warfare operation" against the president.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who made several trips to meet with the Ukrainian president, including that president's inauguration mentioned in the report, brushed off critics "impugning all kinds of nefarious motives here."
"This has been blown way out of proportion," Johnson said.
In his opening remarks, committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff called the complaint "the most graphic evidence yet that the president of the United States has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed his oath to defend our national security and betrayed his oath to defend our Constitution."
Schiff, D-Calif., said that by stepping forward, the whistleblower "has shown more dedication to country ... than the president himself."
Maguire, a retired admiral and Navy SEAL who previously ran the National Counterterrorism Center, has at times expressed his displeasure with the White House counsel and others who he felt put him in an untenable position -- denying material to Congress by relying on a claim that the whistleblower's complaint didn't fall within the jurisdiction of the director of the intelligence community, according to current and former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Officials said Maguire had been pursuing an opportunity to speak to Congress and defend his actions and integrity.
"I want to make clear that I have upheld my responsibility to follow the law every step of the way," Maguire said in a statement Tuesday evening.
The New York Times has reported that three people familiar with the whistleblower's identity say he is a CIA officer once detailed to work at the White House, though his attorneys have refused to confirm that.
The whistleblower, in the nine-page document, claims White House officials took steps to "lock down" information about the Zelenskiy call, even moving the transcript to a secret computer system.
"This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call."
The document also describes a shadow campaign of foreign policy efforts by the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani that unnerved some senior administration officials who felt he was circumventing normal channels.
"Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well," the complaint stated.
A spokeswoman for Barr has said he did not know about the phone call until the whistleblower issue was raised and that he had not spoken with Trump about assisting Ukraine with an investigation of the Bidens.
Giuliani also denied the allegations.
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"I'm in a den of completely horrible people, and you're spending all this time on bull----," Giuliani told The Washington Post. "The whistleblower doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's a political activist. The son of a b---- lied about me."
In the complaint, the anonymous whistleblower acknowledged not being present for Trump's Ukraine call but said multiple White House officials shared consistent details about it.
The document shows the author of the complaint was troubled not just by the call, but by what he viewed as a broader four-month pattern of election season misconduct involving the president, his lawyer and White House aides who sought to keep the whole thing quiet.
"I am also concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections," the person wrote.
In response to the document's release, Trump threatened "the person" who he said gave information to the whistleblower. Trump was speaking at a private event in New York with staff members from the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
"Who's the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that's close to a spy," Trump said in audio posted by The Los Angeles Times. "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now." During his remarks, he also used derogatory language about reporters
"You know, these animals in the press," Trump said. "They're animals, some of the worst human beings you'll ever meet."
Someone in the room shouted out "Fake news," egging on the president.
"They're scum," Trump continued.
Information for this article was contributed by Shane Harris, Karoun Demirjian, Ellen Nakashima, Carol D. Leonnig, Karen DeYoung, John Hudson and Ashley Parker of The Washington Post; by Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick, Michael Balsamo, Lisa Mascaro, Laurie Kellman and Alan Fram of The Associated Press; and by Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Julian E. Barnes of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/27/2019