director joseph maguire steps in and starting is scrambling and consulting others in the administration and officials at the justice department and puts the brakes on this process. and that s sort of where we are now and why this has blown up into a big controversy. on what basis has and did the dni refuse to turn this information over to congress to date? because the law says if the inspector general deems this matter to be of urgent concern, that is specific language, then the information is turned over to congress. so the dni, the director of national intelligence, is basically disputing that this meets that legal threshold saying in part this doesn t involve an employee who answers to me or who works for one of our intelligence services. this is somebody outside the intelligence community. and therefore, this doesn t fall within my jurisdiction or our
protect this information. i m going to conceal this information from members of congress. which is also the opposite of what the inspector general determined which is a quote, urgent concern. but i think the larger point is doesn t this sort of blow up the very nature of whistle-blower complaints? the whole point of a whistle-blower complaint and the way the statutes are written is that you don t need your boss permission. you can t rely on your boss permission. this is you are so concerned by something you ve seen within your organization that of course you don t need your boss permission to blow the whistle on this or you wouldn t be doing it. and so this the whole system is built so something like this doesn t happen. absolutely. we complain a lot about those instances in which individuals say they have a whistle-blower claim and don t go through the proper procedures in the
speculate, but if the president made some kind of promise to vladimir putin and here we need to be careful too. he is the president of the united states. he has the authority to declassify whatever materials he wants. he has the authority to negotiate with foreign leaders. but, you know, just to sort of play the other end of the spectrum, if he promised vladimir putin, you know, to lift sanction if the russians help him in the next election, now we have a very, very serious challenge to our democracy. i m not saying it it s that, i just saying it could be very serious and can t speculate until we hear from the inspector general. if the inspector general said it is of, quote, urgent concern. it s not nothing. it s not nothing. yeah. the problem with this president, of course, is that, you know, the president via twitter threatens to insinner rate north korea with nuclear weapons. is that serious or not? and so we ll have some thinking to do. right. that s a good point. congre
the intel community said this was of, quote, urgent concern. that the president s conversation, his promise to a foreign leader was of, quote, urgent concern. the independent inspector general said that. and that congress should be made aware of this conversation that was of, i will say again, the word, quote, the phrase, urgent concern. and the acting attorney general, the acting head of the intelligence community, the dni doesn t think it s of such concern that needs to be taken a look at. i mean, this is not the first time that the president has had a terrible relationship with the intelligence community. he s disrespected the intelligence community. he s questioned their judgment. that was one of the reasons that led to the resignation of dni
congress now? the statute talks about flagrant abuse of power, illegal acts. illegal acts. there are lots of things that aren t illegal for the president that are illegal for other people. classified information sharing. can we make that point, because shane you made this point in the piece, i ve heard other people make this point. it s important for people that are just waking up and listening, this is not about the president doing something wreck le and bragging. he can do that, but he has the ability to blurt out highly classified information. that would not meet this threshold of urgent concern in the is something actually worse, something that the ig suspected might be illegal which prompted the, quote, urgent concern. well, i don t think we know that the ig thought it might be illegal but think your deduction is right. this is is not something in the category of things we ve seen