The nation's top intelligence official has refused to comply with a House Intelligence Committee subpoena to provide the contents of a whistleblower complaint that a government watchdog deemed 'urgent' and credible, Chairman Adam Schiff said
The nation's top intelligence official has refused to comply with a House Intelligence Committee subpoena to provide the contents of a whistleblower complaint that a government watchdog deemed "urgent" and credible, Chairman Adam Schiff said late Tuesday, warning that the agency may be acting to conceal high-level wrongdoing by President Donald Trump or his immediate advisers.
Schiff sounded an alarm last week after acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire intervened to block Congress from receiving the contents of the still-secret whistleblower complaint. Maguire, according to Schiff, diverted it to the Justice Department and told the committee he would refuse to share it because it involved someone outside the intelligence community and might involve matters of confidentiality and privilege.
But Maguire's general counsel Jason Klitenic, in a letter to Schiff on Tuesday, insisted Maguire had followed the letter of the law in blocking the transmission of the complaint to Congress. The whistleblower statute governing his agency, he said, only applies when the complaint involves a member of the intelligence community. Because it was aimed at a person outside the intelligence community, he said, the whistleblower statute does not apply to this scenario.
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