On Wednesday evening, The Washington Post reported that a mysterious whistleblower report that has been the subject of back-and-forth letters between the intelligence community and the House was directly related to an action taken by Donald Trump. The subject of the report is alleged to be an interaction between Trump and a foreign leader that included a promise so startling that someone who witnessed this act felt compelled to report it.
On Aug. 12, while Trump was busy doing his job—golfing at one of his clubs—an as yet unidentified person turned in a whistleblower report alleging a “serious or flagrant problem, abuse or violation of the law” that went to the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire. By law, the House Intelligence Committee should have been provided with the report by Sept. 3. It was not. Instead, Maguire remained silent, not even notifying the House that a report had been filed until Sept. 9, when the inspector general for the intelligence agencies said that he was investigating a report that he found both credible and urgent. Finally, on Sept. 13, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff issued a demand for the report. Maguire refused to produce it.
Inspector General Michael Atkinson is set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday in a closed session. After at first refusing, Maguire has also agreed to come before the committee next week.
In the meantime, the revelations about this whistleblower report have touched off the greatest D.C. guessing game in months: Who was Trump talking to, and what did he promise that made someone on his own team so concerned that they felt compelled to file that report? Without knowing anymore details, it’s hard to know just how soon after the event the report was filed. If the person who produced the report was in the room when Trump made his promise, that report may have been filed soon after. Or it may have taken some time before the whistleblower learned of the event, or before she or he worked up enough concern to override any loyalty felt toward Trump.
Records indicate that Trump spoke with several foreign leaders in the weeks that preceded the report’s filing, and those are just the communications known to the public. But there are some potential candidates for Trump’s act that seem concerning enough for someone on his own team to turn him in.
The idea that Trump would say something shocking to a foreign leader isn’t exactly a revelation. After all, he loudly spilled classified info to the Russian ambassador in May of 2017 just after firing FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation. But Trump has also been incredibly careful about hiding his interactions with foreign leaders from American intelligence. That includes speaking to Vladimir Putin with no American interpreter present, destroying the notes of his meetings, and complaining about the use of intelligence assets.
There’s one obvious candidate for Trump’s promise—a military aid package for Ukraine. In August, Trump refused to release an aid package that had already worked its way through both congressional and White House review. Instead, he insisted that he wanted an additional review to see if the package was “in America’s best interest.” This was done even though Trump was aware that the funding authority for the package runs out on Sept. 30. Trump finally did release the aid package to Ukraine on Sept. 12—after Congress became aware of the whistleblower report and Schiff began demanding details.
But Putin is far from the only foreign leader that Trump communicated with in the period before the report was filed. Though sources have indicated that this promise was made by phone call, Trump during that period had an exchange of letters with Kim Jong Un. And Trump was involved in negotiations with China that included several promises to American farmers that China was about to make large purchases. Along the same lines, just a week before the report was filed, Trump declared that, while China wasn’t buying its usual amounts of agricultural goods, Japan had promised to make a huge purchase. Any of those conversations seems like a likely candidate for Trump’s actions. Trump may have easily made a promise to Chinese or Japanese leaders in exchange for a purchase he could use to patch up his crumbling relationship with Midwest farmers. Or Trump may have made a promise to Kim.
And, of course, the situation in the Persian Gulf was worsening in this period. That promise could have been to Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman, or perhaps to politically challenged Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. A promise to employ American military force in exchange for either dollars or some political favor might certainly have been shocking enough to make someone move.
Here’s one last thing from out on the fringes of Conspiracy Theory Land. Two days before that report was filed, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell. That connection seems unlikely, and even bringing it up seems only a short hop from the Land of Q.
But considering the things Trump has done in the past, and what it must have taken for someone inside the White House to raise this flag … anything seems possible.