At present, Congress has another scandal from the Trump administration on their hands — a whistleblower in the intelligence community has sounded an alarm about what’s believed to be President Donald Trump’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Now, as Congressional Democrats continue to try and get to the bottom of exactly what’s happened, Trump and Zelensky are reported to be planning to meet at the United Nations General Assembly, which is unfolding now in New York. The topic of their upcoming meeting remains not publicly delineated at present — but could the get together come at a less opportune time?
Reportedly, “a call between Mr. Trump and the newly-elected Zelensky on July 25 was the focal point of the complaint” that the so far not publicly identified intelligence community whistleblower attempted to sound an alarm about. They filed a complaint with the inspector general overseeing the intelligence community, who deemed the complaint “credible” and sent it off to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who was supposed to send the material to Congress — but the process has ground to a halt there. Interests from Maguire to inspector general Michael Atkinson have indicated they’ve been directed by higher up forces in the Trump administration to keep quiet, and the options for who those doing the directing are remain pretty slim.
Atkinson spoke behind closed doors this past Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee, but he declined to reveal the substance of the whistleblower complaint at all according to the direction of the administration, he said. Maguire, meanwhile, is slated to testify before the same panel publicly next week. According to a committee spokesperson, the “Senate Intelligence Committee expects to be briefed by both about the complaint next week.”
Trump has insisted there’s nothing to the complaint, which reportedly includes more issues with the president’s behavior than just his one call with Ukraine’s new president. If there’s really nothing to see here, however, then why is the Trump administration so obsessively attempting to keep the information from seeing the light of day?
Suggesting the depths of the president’s paranoia over the issue, he took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the so far unnamed whistleblower as “highly partisan.” In other words, at present, those seeking to defend the United States on the intelligence community front can not count on the support of the president.
Trump railed:
‘The Radical Left Democrats and their Fake News Media partners, headed up again by Little Adam Schiff, and batting Zero for 21 against me, are at it again! They think I may have had a “dicey” conversation with a certain foreign leader based on a “highly partisan” whistleblowers statement… there was nothing said wrong, it was pitch perfect!’
Putting together bits and pieces of the story that have emerged, the conversation in question appears to have included Trump trying to pressure Ukrainian leadership into producing dirt on former Vice President and Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden, who the president alleges inappropriately gained from a power shift in the country.
Featured Image via screenshot
