respect to transferring the transcript on to the code word system. i am very surprised to hear from the department of justice that attorney general barr did hear about the contents of this call until reportedly weeks after it happened. the department of justice issued that as a statement a few days ago. attorney general barr was mentioned by name on the call with the president and he is saying that he did not have any knowledge of the fact that he was named in the call despite the fact he was named by the president of the united states and somehow other officials at the state department went to do follow-up work with the ukrainens and contacted rudy giuliani but did not contact the department of justice to follow-up. let me read something from the complaint. it says and this is the whistleblower writing this. according to white house officials i spoke with, this was not the first time under this administration that a presidential transcript was
required by law and explaining his view that it was subject to a president s ability to claim executive privilege. we consulted with the white house council s office and were advised the information was subject to executive privileg, a privilege that i do not have the authority to waive. reporter: it was he noted an unprecedented legal situation in many ways. this appears to be the first intelligence committee whistleblower complaint that has ever, ever been withheld from congress. is that right, sir? congressman, carson, i believe that it might be. once again, i said in my statement, it is a fact as far as i m concerned unprecedented. reporter: many democrats said they were stunned that upon receiving a complaint that fingered the president and the attorney general for possible wrong doing, magire first consulted the offices of those
seeing the testimony today, do you think this was a cover up? i think it s obvious that there is a cover up. if you read the whistleblower s complaint, it lays it out. in fact, it lays it out so much that there appears to be and others have noted this something close to a smoking gun in that summary. but more important than that, there is a road map that the whistleblower has given. it s not like john dean s road map in watergate. it s more like the revelations of alex butterfield that there was a white house taping system that led to nixon s doom. what we have now is that this whistleblower has talked really about a lock box system that may contain more and more evidence of the president s construction. we already got today paragraph after paragraph of real corruption, real abuse of power by the president of the united states. john dean talked about a cancer
growing on the presidency. this one seems to be the president is the cancer if we are to read that whistleblower s complaint adequately. if weir where does the investigation go? there are a bunch of folks who are saying this shouldn t be a long investigation that goes into the election year, that essentially there is a lot of stuff out there and people need to come forward and talk and testify and it can be wrapped up shortly. it sounds like there are a lot of issues about whether other white house officials will be allowed to speak because of executive privilege by this white house. that lock box system, is it clear to you that that can actually be looked into since it s highly classified? i don t know. but there seems to be a good number of witnesses to all kinds of events and all kinds of memoranda that were recorded.
those are all issues that i think we should resolve to see if this president is involved in other shady dealings. you called the whistleblower a true patriot coming forward with the allegations. what s your reaction to the president demanding to know who the people are who gave the information to the whistleblower and suggesting their actions are tantamount about being a spy. those are not the words you would ever hope to hear out of the mouth of the president of the united states. that s what you would hear from an organized crime boss. those words and those implied threats fit into the conduct described by the whistleblower of a president offering this deal to the ukrainians and then his team seeking to cover it up. it all fits into a pattern of misconduct by the president. appreciate your time. thank you. my pleasure.