you report that secretary of state tillerson recognized the president s request he should intervene in this case as illegal. recognize that in the moment as illegal and immediately rejected it because it would constitution interference in an on going investigation and conveyed that to the white house chief of staff john kelly. if this was in 2017, do you have any sense and talk about why this might becoming out now? i think what is going on is a lot of us were very interested, you know, after the ukraine impeachment, the whistle blower complaint came out, we just started digging around on, you know, what other phone calls or interactions the president would have had and, you know, over the course of his term so far and, you know, have spoken to many people who said that there were many calls the president made and many meetings he had where there were inappropriate things that were said, whether it s state department officials or white house officials who as in the whistle blower cas
president s request he should intervene in this case as illegal. recognize that in the moment as illegal and immediately rejected it because it would constitution interference in an on going investigation and conveyed that to the white house chief of staff john kelly. if this was in 2017, do you have any sense and talk about why this might becoming out now? i think what is going on is a lot of us were very interested, you know, after the ukraine impeachment, the whistle blower complaint came out, we just started digging around on, you know, what other phone calls or interactions the president would have had and, you know, over the course of his term so far and, you know, have spoken to many people who said that there were many calls the president made and many meetings he had where there were inappropriate things that were said, whether it s state department officials or white house officials who as in the whistle blower case in the ukraine phone call were shocked sometimes or at the
brought forward each member of congress will have to take a vote on that. there is nothing in the constitution about an official vote launching an inquiry. not at all. would you be pose opposed to doing that in a week and a half when you come back? i m not. but given what we ve seen from the president who s basically confirmed abuse of power, betrayal of the oath of his office, i also don t think it is necessary at this point. and like i said, when we bring forward specific articles of impeachment, then every member of congress will have to vote yes or no on those. michael atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general is meeting with your committee today. i ve almost lost track of how many twists and turns there have been in the story since the whistle blower complaint was first released and atkinson deemed it of urgent concern but this is your first chance i think to delve into the substance with him. what questions do you want answered? we d met with him for abou
three and a half hours previously. but at that time there was less he could say. that was before the transcript of the phone call. before the whistle blower s complaint was released. so now we want a better understanding of the range of evidence that he received from the whistle blower. and basically what it says about the president s action, what the president may have asked for and how much it conforms the information we have now. overall big picture when we saw the pet on the white house lawn yesterday call on china, call on ukraine to investigate joe biden, it seems the approach he s taking is sort of the jack nicholson approach. you are damn right i did. it is out there in the open for everyone to see. deal wit. what are you con certaincerns a fact this may be effective, he may be normalizing what you see as an abuse of power. that is definitely what he s trying to do. but just because you walk into a
wondering if you re hearing anything from the white house on this new reporting about other white house officials who corroborate the whistle-blower s complaint? reporter: well, don, this is what s interesting because over the last several days before we really knew the details of this whistle-blower s complaint, you heard from the white house, from president trump and his top officials that they said they believed this whistle-blower was someone who was partisan, potentially disgruntled, someone who was essentially out to get the president, potentially a career employee. and now today as we re learning more about this whistle-blower s identity, as we re seeing this complaint start to take shape, you re seeing that the inspector general interviewed other white house officials who were involved in this, who apparently were giving some kind of a heads-up to the person who eventually filed this complaint because what you heard from the president even today during that press conference w