I’m pretty sure most of you didn’t watch the House Intelligence hearing with acting DNI Joseph Maguire yesterday. The Dems on the committee did a good job, in my opinion, no matter how anyone tries to spin it. I’ll do my best to break down the origins of the scandal that galvanized the impeachment movement in 27 points with one addendum. Feel free to correct the record on anything I’ve gotten wrong, as I’ve done almost all of this from pure memory. I also wasn’t following any of this on a big scale during all the big events this week due to having very little free time. The transcript of the hearing is linked to first that also links to a video of the hearing (fantastic work doing that by the way):
https://www.rev.com/blog/joseph-maguire-testimony-transcript-intel-chief-testifies-before-congress
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The Intelligence Community Inspector General heard from a whistleblower, and a 14 day investigation commenced.
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At the end of the investigation the ICIG concluded the whistleblower’s claims were credible and fell under the definition of ‘urgent concern’. That means that the IG’s report and whistleblower complaint shall be turned over to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
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The Director of National Intelligence’s job is to forward that complaint/report to them no questions asked. The Inspector General’s decision is the final one, but the ICIG cannot step outside of the DNI once the report has been turned over.
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The language is clear that if something is deemed ‘urgent’, it ‘shall’ be turned over to the Intelligence committees by the DNI within 7 days of receipt from the IG.
And that’s where we have the film noir moment in our movie, ‘The Banana Peel Who Tripped Me’.
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The DNI is not allowed an opinion of any kind on the Inspector General’s report. Their job is to pass it along. If they don’t pass it along, the courts are not allowed to get involved. So, if this weren’t turned over, the committees would have had no recourse to force them to turn it over.
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The acting DNI had just started his job when this happened. He even famously said in the hearing today that if he had known about this complaint he wouldn’t have taken the job.
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In the proper film noir etiquette, because he was new, he should have asked the ICIG what he needed to do since it contained explosive and impeachable evidence against the president. The ICIG would have told him to give it to the committees and wash his hands of it. The American public would have no idea that this occurred.
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But this is a film noir named ‘The Banana Peel Who Tripped Me’, and you know that didn’t happen. In the complaint that was released on September 26, 2019, Trump did some very bad stuff on a phone call with the Ukranian president, impeachable stuff. He told the Ukranian president to work with his guys Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr who were working on this in tandem related to Joe Biden. People were apparently so freaked out by this phone call that White House officials (just read this as lawyers) asked for the word for word transcript to be placed on a classified NSC computer to effectively hide it (a former NSA Inspector General said on MSNBC last night that classifying something intentionally incorrectly would result in him frog marching the person out that day potentially straight to the FBI to be put in handcuffs). This raised major concerns with many people who said that was an inappropriate usage of that computer. And this was apparently not the only time this had happened.
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At this point, Trump, White House lawyers, Giuliani, and Barr were all most likely either going to be willing participants in a crime or were attempting to cover up a crime committed by the president.
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Let’s go back to number 7. The acting DNI’s job is to turn that report over to the committees, no questions asked. The ICIG’s decision is final. And until the ICIG turns over the report to the DNI for transfer, he is still in charge of the investigation. If the whistleblower feels it’s being slow walked or crushed, the whistleblower is allowed to go to the committees him/herself as long as the complaint/report hasn’t been turned over to the DNI for forwarding. Once it’s been turned over, and deemed credible, the whistleblower is not allowed to do that anymore. The ICIG is not allowed to turn it over if the DNI does not comply. So, if the DNI doesn’t turn it over, the complaint is dead, and if the ICIG or whistleblower want to get it out there, they’re exposed legally. That’s a nice rigged system, huh?
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I might not have this quite right, but after the 7 day period was up the ICIG let the House Intelligence Committee chairman (also possibly the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, though this process hasn’t been widely reported) that a whistleblower complaint hadn’t been turned over at the required time period. At this point (2 Fridays ago), Schiff subpoenaed it. The reason apparently given to him for not turning it over was that the subject of the whistleblower’s complaint was not a member of the intelligence community. Schiff’s a smart guy, and a former prosecutor. He deduced that this meant the complaint centered around either the president or someone in his inner circle.
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At some point during this time after the subpoena was delivered, the acting DNI made the decision that the complaint wasn’t ‘urgent’, and therefore didn’t need to be turned over to the Intelligence committees. Remember what I said above? He has NO power to make that decision. The ICIG’s decision is final, and not open to interpretation. The acting DNI’s only even partially rational argument was that the subject was not a member of the intelligence community. Remember, no one at this time knew who this was or what this was about except less than a handful of people. Again, that’s not his call to make. But he did. And this is where this guy stumbles into some of the biggest idiocy and poorest judgment I can remember seeing on this stage.
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The stakes of why this was deemed ‘urgent’ were probably related to the president’s nonsensical withholding of $400 million in funding for Ukraine’s defense that had already been appropriated by Congress but not distributed. These funds would expire on September 30 if not distributed. Ukraine is under severe threat from Russia and depends on the U.S. for defense purposes for protection, more so than any other country (many chip in but nowhere near the level of the U.S.). The acting DNI today told Val Demings that the other countries weren’t pitching in their fair share. He was too obtuse to understand why it was so important to get that funding until he was in way too deep. Based on other reporting, the Ukrainians believed that a condition of even having a phone call with Trump was that they would agree to investigate Biden. And the money was pulled back, again nonsensically to people close to him, by Trump. After much pressure, Trump did release the funding On September 12, but by then Schiff and Burr had still not been told about the whistleblower complaint.
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In the acting DNI’s second mistake (first was not just turning it over to the committees), his first stop according to his testimony on September 26 was to the White House (read this as White House lawyers). You know, those people implicated in the complaint of the moving of a document to a classified computer in an improper way (a side note is that they were hiding this phone call from other cabinet members who needed to see those calls to carry out policy, and this was done apparently on multiple occasions as stated above). These were the people responsible for the cover up of the phone call, and the acting DNI went to them first for advice. I wonder how that went…
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After that, my assumption is that he talked to the president, you know, the subject of the whistleblower complaint and probably asked him what he should do. He refused to say whether he talked about this with the president, citing privilege. And that he would never talk about any conversation that he has with the president, because of executive privilege. Yet twice, he said he did not talk to the president or said he was not directed by the president to do something. Wait a minute, I thought he said that he wouldn’t talk about anything he had talked about with the president. So, I think it’s reasonable to deduce that he talked with the president about the complaint directly, because he tried to assert privilege related to ALL conversations with him. Unless, of course, the conversation didn’t happen or a directive didn’t happen. I mean, this guy…lol. Either the lawyers or the president, or both, told him to go to the DOJ for guidance.
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You know, another subject named in the complaint, Attorney General Barr. As he claimed numerous times during the hearing, the acting DNI said he also referred the complaint to the FBI for investigation. Barr likely told the acting DNI to get an opinion from the OLC. According to the acting DNI’s testimony, he was guided that the concern was neither ‘urgent’, nor applicable to the statute as the subject(s) were not in the intelligence community. I’d say that’s mighty convenient for the subjects of the investigation to come to that conclusion.
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By this point, the acting DNI had thoroughly screwed the pooch, but he still could have saved a lot of trouble by just complying with the subpoena by turning over the complaint/report. He, of course, did not. During the period where it very much looked like this complaint was going to be dead and buried, details of it started leaking to the press (late last week I believe).
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As more details leaked out, a firestorm began brewing on Monday. Trump admitted to several things, while saying the call went ‘perfect’. We still had no idea whether the acting DNI would turn over the report. That night, it broke that 7 vulnerable Democratic freshman members of the House who were once in the intelligence community wrote an op-ed about what this meant, if true. This is the main crux of what they wrote: “If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense. We do not arrive at this conclusion lightly, and we call on our colleagues in Congress to consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of ‘inherent contempt’ and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security,”
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Within 24 hours numerous Democratic members of the House came out in support of an official impeachment inquiry.
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Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, and the Trump people started scrambling. First they released the memo of the phone call. That memo was…bad. And it for sure was not everything said on that call. That was what they felt was the most positive light for the phone call, and well, there wasn’t any positive light.
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As the Democratic members of the House were nearing having the votes for impeachment (218) on September 25, Trump decided he was going to release the complaint, and the complaint was given to the two intelligence committees. The House intelligence committee immediately deemed this should be de-classified after reading it, and wanted to use it in the testimony of the acting DNI on September 26.
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In testimony on September 26, the acting DNI said multiple times he referred the complaint to the FBI. I’m sure it became super shocking to him to learn from Schiff that the DOJ said there was nothing there, and killed the FBI investigation of the complaint. This decision was certainly made by one of the subjects of the complaint, evil genius Bill Barr.
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Late in the hearing, he tried to say he complied with the law, they have the complaint. He felt like that should be it, kind of like how Trump thought all this impeachment talk would go away if he just released the material. That’s how bad these corrupt monsters are at all of this.
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All in all, none of this needed to happen if the acting DNI had just done his job. The ICIG determined it was ‘urgent’, and that it was required by law to be shared with the intelligence committees in 7 days. The acting DNI then made a decision about ‘urgent’ he wasn’t qualified or allowed to make and used that in his determination to not turn it over. He asserted executive privilege concerns for the material despite the White House not actually asserting any of those ‘privileges’ at any point when that is their singular way of obstructing everything else going on. Based on how things were going for this guy, I’m sure they told him, ‘It’s up to you what you want to do’, because there’s no way they were going to ask him directly to kill this (knowing that the ramifications of that would be way worse than what transpired here). Because the acting DNI seemingly has constantly exhibited colossally bad judgment at every step of the process, you know how this went.
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The hilarity is that if he had done his job, we’d still be plodding slowly but surely toward impeachment with maybe 150 Democratic members of the House on the record. We, the people, would never have heard about this. Instead, it galvanized the desires to impeach the president and some betting markets actually think he has a chance of being convicted in the Senate. Someone close to a GOP Senator on September 26 said that if the vote were held privately at least 20 would convict (source needed). On September 27, former spineless Senator Jeff Flake said the number is actually 35 who would do it in private. There are 47 Democratic members of the Senate, and if they went party line along with 20 other GOP senators, that would be enough votes to convict the president and remove him from office, and 35 would obviously be way more than enough.
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As of September 27, 225 Democratic members of the House are on the record in support of something related to impeachment (lol at Tulsi Gabbard’s weak statement, when after this scandal broke she still wasn’t interested in impeachment). Only 10 Democratic members of the House are not on the record. 8 of the 10 are freshmen in heavily GOP districts. The other two are in heavily GOP districts but have been in the House longer. Collin Peterson was stated on here to be a very bad guy who’s basically a Republican. The big news today is that the first GOP member, Mark Amodei of Nevada, came out in support of letting an official impeachment inquiry run its course. That puts the total at 227 members of the House.
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To wrap up, NONE of this needed to happen. That’s why the film noir is called, ‘The Banana Peel Who Tripped Me’.
ADDENDUM: Here’s the relevant language related to the acting DNI’s requirements in delivering the complaint and IG letter to the House and Senate Intelligence committees. If he made the terrible decisions he did in good faith, he’s absolutely incompetent:
(U) Having determined that the complaint relating to the urgent concern appears credible, I am transmitting to you this notice of my determination, along with the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix. Upon receipt of this transmittal, the Director of National Intelligence “shall, within 7 calendar days of such receipt, forward such transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees, together with any comments the Director considers appropriate.”
Because the ICIG has the statutory responsibility to “notify an employee who reports a complaint or information” to the ICIG concerning an urgent concern “of each action taken” with respect to the complaint or information “not later than 3 days after any such action is taken,” I respectfully request that you provide the ICIG with notice of your transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees not later than 3 days after the transmittal is made to them. In addition, as required by the statute, the ICIG is required to notify the Complainant not later than 3 days after today’s date of my determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern appears credible and that the ICIG transmitted on today’s date notice of that determination to the Director of National Intelligence, along with the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix.
He even included this:
(U) If you have any questions or require additional information concerning this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me.
That language doesn’t seem very difficult to understand for me as a layperson. I have no idea what the acting DNI’s issue was with understanding it. Is it possible he wasn’t acting in good faith after all? I guess we’ll never know…
Nah, I’m going to assume he’s dumb as a sack of rocks and is only good at taking orders. His willingness to join the Trump admin at all at this stage (and after reading the Mueller report) shows he’s just one of them. GJGE acting DNI, you inadvertently have the president heading toward a potential impeachment conviction over something that should have never seen the light of day.
Edited To Correct A Date: The withheld $400m was disbursed on September 11, not September 12 based on something I saw today. I might have used the 12th as an article date there.
getting impeached by the House. He’s probably