The “transcript” of a phone conversation between Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky released by the White House on Wednesday confirms that Trump asked the president of Ukraine to cooperate with Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr in manufacturing dirt against Joe Biden. It also features an utterly bizarre request that Ukraine go searching for a DNC email server that was never missing in the first place—because even in July of 2019, Trump cannot stop asking foreign countries to search for Hillary Clinton’s email.
But what the not-an-actual-transcript makes clear is that this document alone, while utterly damning to Trump, only means that there are more important documents still to come. Sources have indicated that the call between Trump and Zelensky is just one of the actions that generated a whistleblower report to the inspector general of the intelligence community. The importance of that whistleblower report, and of other associated information, is now even greater, because the magnitude of what Trump has done, and continues to do, is even greater than expected.
That doesn’t mean that the full unredacted whistleblower report should immediately become public—not until arrangements have been made to ensure that the whistleblower is protected in every possible way from the consequences of their identity being revealed. Trump hates whistleblowers. Trump hates the idea that anyone, anywhere would speak up to defend the law or national interest. Because Trump believes that everyone, in every circumstance, should have loyalty only to him.
It does mean that the whistleblower complaint should immediately be handed off to the House Intelligence Committee as the law requires. If the discussion covered in the transcript is only part of a pattern of behavior, then the totality of the crime is enormous.
Some of the broader scope is visible within the phone call document, as when Zelensky mentions that Giuliani has already been in contact with his government. When Trump mentions Biden to Zelensky, he does so without elaborating about Biden’s actions, or his son’s position, because Trump clearly treats this as the middle of a larger conversation. That could mean, as many have suggested, that large parts of the phone call itself are missing; but it could equally well mean that this phone call is far from the only instance of Trump communicating with Zelensky’s government.
Also required immediately is the full inspector general’s report on the whistleblower report and subsequent action. It’s been clear from the letters that have gone back and forth between House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson that the IG disagrees strongly with the decisions made by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire in withholding the report from Congress. The big clue to this is that Atkinson says in those letters that he disagrees strongly.
From the outset, Atkinson was clear that the complaint filed was both credible and an urgent matter. That second definition means that, at least in Atkinson’s estimation, this was not a matter of policy, but a serious concern to national security. That he was forced to withhold the report by Maguire, and forced to stifle his testimony by the White House, has plainly frustrated the intelligence community IG, and makes his evaluation of the initial report—which should include his attempts to determine the accuracy of the information in the complaint—extremely important.
One of the talking points circulated by the White House on Wednesday is that the whistleblower report was handled “by the book,” starting with step one, in which, “After receiving the complaint, the DNI appropriately consulted the Office of Legal Counsel.” Except there is nothing appropriate about that first step, or about any of the steps that followed. There is no provision under the law for the DNI to do anything other than ink his approval on sending the IG’s report on to Congress. Maguire did not do that. He sent it to Attorney General William Barr, who squelched it by claiming that it was not within the scope of intelligence matters—a determination that’s also not part of the law.
The whistleblower report and the inspector general’s report weren’t just mishandled. They were handled illegally, repeatedly, at every step.
They should be in the hands of the intelligence committees. Now.
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