adam schiff says he wants the whistleblower to appear before his committee. and looks like the whistleblower is prepared to do that. he has to get authorization from the dni. they re talking to the attorneys so we don t know. there is a bigger story here. it is going to get more complicated. what we see tomorrow will be one little piece of the puzzle here. if the white house is releasing it you can be sure they believe donald trump is fine in this phone conversation. and one thing the congressman i believe was eluding to, the question of whether or not a presidential phone call falls in statutory definition of an intelligence activity, so the legal technicalities, who makes final judgment, does executive trump the law in this case. that s why the step that pelosi took of formally endorsing a formal impeachment inquiry is significant. it is a message from house of representatives that they re not playing this game any longer, they re not doing this thing where they take weeks and
the matter. that s why it s important for congress and the american people to get the complaint, the whistleblower s complaint as the law requires and at this point see the transcript or whatever there is from the conversation. at this point it looks like this intelligence operative was really going by the book and filing this complaint with the intelligence community inspector general. but now you have the director of national intelligence who is saying he doesn t have the responsibility to forward this on because it s not technically part of intelligence activity. it relates to the executive branch and the president. what recourse does this whistleblower now have for his or her complaint to be heard? well, it certainly that dynamic that you just described with the dni certainly puts the whistleblower in a more precarious situation which is truly unfortunate. we don t know yet all of the details related to the
committee which again under the law, the law of the land should have already received this whistle blower complaint. there should have been nothing standing between the congress and getting this complaint. this is the letter that the acting dni sent. because the disclosure in this case did not concern allegations of conduct by a member of the intelligence committee or involve an intelligence activity under the dni supervision we determined after consulting with the department of justice that no statute requires disclosure of the complaint to the intelligence committee. does that make any sense to you that this acting dni would first of all go to donald trump s man in the department of justice, his guy who is acting in every way, check with him and then determine that they do not have to follow this law? does that letter make any sense to you sf. my understanding is that department of justice has no place in this process as as the law has been written. it should go to the ig at the
practically motivated. at some point, someone had to act on an action, and that action disturbed them morally and also probably disturbed them in the fact they were concerned they might be breaking the law. the second part is probably the reason that they filed that complaint. and as you know, the inspector general of the intelligence committee deemed the whistleblower complaint urgent. but the acting director of the national intelligence refused to release it to congress arguing the complaint does not involve conduct by a member of the intelligence community or involve an intelligence activity. cot president seeking foreign help against an opponent be considered an issue of national security? i think it does. but it s, look, i, i ll say this as a personal opinion, i have no love for donald trump. but as that being said, as the president he has the right to ghost how he sees fit. i think that when it starts to pass the transom, when it becomes something that congress should investi
we re back now with sam, evan and sean. so, listen, sean, i want to read part of the intel inspector general s letter to the house intelligence committee responding to the dni saying that the complaint is not in our jurisdiction. michael atkinson writes i nevertheless respectfully disagree with the acting dni s conclusi conclusion that it doesn t contain any intelligence activity and that the disclosure, therefore, need not be transmitted to the congressional intelligence committees. so what atkinson is saying, i mean, this does concern this does concern intelligence activity. he disagrees with the doj and the dni. what do you think about how this is handled?