Trump White House blocks airing of whistleblower complaint

The Trump ­administration has plunged into a showdown with congress over a whistleblower’s complaint.

House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff said he was prepared to go to court to try to force the Trump administration. Picture: AFP

The Trump ­administration has plunged into an ­extraordinary showdown with congress over a whistleblower’s complaint about incidents including a private conversation ­between the President and a ­foreign leader.

The blocked complaint was both “serious” and “urgent”, the government’s intelligence watchdog said.

The administration is keeping congress from even learning what exactly the whistleblower is alleging, but the intelligence community’s inspector general said the matter involved the “most significant” responsibilities of intelligence leadership. One politician said the complaint was “based on a ­series of events”.

The Washington Post and The New York Times reported on Thursday night (Friday AEST) that at least part of the complaint involved Ukraine. The news­papers cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

The inspector general ­appeared before the house intelligence committee behind closed doors on Thursday but declined, under administration orders, to reveal to members the substance of the complaint. The standoff raises fresh questions about the extent to which Donald Trump’s allies are protecting him from oversight and, specifically, if his new acting director of national ­intelligence, ­Joseph Maguire, is working with the Justice Department to shield the President from the reach of congress.

House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff said he was prepared to go to court to try to force the Trump administration to open up about the complaint.

“The inspector general has said this cannot wait,” the Democrat congressman said, describing the administration’s blockade as an unprecedented departure from law.

He could not confirm whether the newspaper reports were accurate because the administration was claiming executive privilege in withholding the complaint. But letters from the inspector general to the committee released on Thursday said it was an “urgent” matter of “serious or flagrant abuse” that must be shared with legislators.

The letters also made it clear that Mr Maguire, consulted the Justice Department in deciding not to transmit the complaint to congress in a further departure from standard procedure. It’s unclear whether the White House was involved, Mr Schiff said.

Because the administration was claiming the information was privileged, Mr Schiff said he ­believed the whistleblower’s complaint “likely involves the President or people around him”.

Mr Trump dismissed it all. “Another Fake News story out there — It never ends!” he ­tweeted.

“Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be many people listening from various US agencies, not to mention those from the other country ­itself. No problem!

“Is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call?”

House Democrats are fighting the administration separately for access to witnesses and documents in impeachment probes. Democrats are also looking into whether Trump lawyer Rudy ­Giuliani travelled to Ukraine to pressure the government to help the President’s re-election effort by investigating the activities of potential rival Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.

Among the materials Democrats have sought in that investigation is the transcript of a phone call Mr Trump had with Ukrain­ian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25.

This new situation, stemming from the whistleblower’s August 12 complaint, has led to Democrat concerns that government intelligence agencies and Mr Maguire might be under pressure to withhold information from congress.

AP