(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Congress and the public have finally gotten to see the whistleblower complaint which has triggered an impeachment inquiry. Indiana Congressman Andre Carson says they should have had it sooner.
Carson serves on the intelligence committee, which called in acting intelligence director Joseph Maguire to explain why he sent the complaint to the White House for review. He accused Maguire of caving to White House pressure in holding back the complaint, despite a law which requires “credible and urgent” complaints to be delivered to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Maguire acknowledges it’s the first time a complaint hasn’t been forwarded — including some which weren’t found credible or urgent.
Maguire says the delay was due to the possibility the White House would assert executive privilege over the discussion of President Trump’s phone conversation with the president of Ukraine. And he argues the whistleblower law covers intelligence staffers who report to the director — the president isn’t part of that chain of command.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw her support behind an impeachment investigation on Tuesday after media reports, confirmed a day later by a White House summary, that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine to open an investigation of former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The whistleblower complaint charges national security officials were alarmed by the call and tried to conceal it by storing it on a separate computer server normally reserved for classified information.
Indiana Senator Mike Braun says he hasn’t read the whistleblower complaint, but has read the official summary of the Ukraine conversation, and dismisses it as “a big nothingburger” A majority of the House has now come out in favor of an impeachment inquiry, including Indiana’s two Democratic House members, Carson and Pete Visclosky. But Braun says he’s not convinced the House will actually vote to impeach, much less get a two-thirds majority in the Senate. He accuses Democrats of being so eager to oust Trump that they got out ahead of the facts, which he contends “fell with a thud.”
President Trump (Photo: Eric Berman/WIBC)
