Today, Explained - The whistleblower complaint

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

The House Intelligence Committee released the whistleblower complaint minutes before Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire began his testimony before Congress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Let me just recap this whole whistleblower thing real quick, at least since the public's been aware of it. It was just shy of two weeks ago that we learned that a whistleblower had made a complaint against the President of the United States. That was it. No details. Democrats wanted the complaint. The administration wouldn't provide it. Nevertheless, towards the end of last week, the details started to spill out. The complaint is about a phone call. It involves Ukraine. At the end of last week, more details. Allegations that President Trump asked President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

And there may have been hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid on the line. Democrats continue to demand the complaint itself, but the administration holds. Instead, yesterday they release a rough transcript of the phone call. Finally, towards the end of the day yesterday, the administration gives the whistleblower complaint to the House Intelligence Committee. And this morning, the unclassified version is released to the public. Andrew Prokop has been sitting in the Today Explained studio at Vox since Monday, covering this with us. So the first big takeaway is that in addition to describing what happened on the now infamous July 25th phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, the whistleblower also describes an alleged White House effort to cover up or hide documents related to what happened on that call. The second big takeaway is that the whistleblower really makes clear that this is not just about what happened on one phone call. The second big takeaway is that the whistleblower really makes clear that this is not

just about what happened on one phone call. He or she chronicles a series of events that took place over months involving Trump that tell a story of a concerted, continuous pressure campaign on the Ukrainian government to start these investigations that would help Trump politically. Okay, let's start with number one. How did the White House try to cover up the phone call? So the whistleblower writes, in the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to lock down all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript. Is that the transcript you and I talked about yesterday,

or is this a different transcript? It's not entirely clear. There are two possibilities. One is that the whistleblower was a bit inexact in referring to a word-for-word transcript. The document that was released yesterday was not a verbatim transcript, but it was written like one. The other

possibility is that there is still an exact word-for-word transcript that is hidden away somewhere, which would obviously be very interesting indeed. So how exactly did the White House try to, quote-unquote, lock down this transcript, whichever one it may have been? So according to the whistleblower, White House officials said they were directed by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored. So they moved it to a separate electronic and record-keeping system that's used for much more secretive information,

information of an especially sensitive nature, the whistleblower writes. One White House official, per the whistleblower, described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective. So basically, they're trying to say that the White House was trying to use secretive procedures designed to shield national security information to keep politically damaging stuff about Trump from being distributed too widely within the government. And the whistleblower mentions that he or she has heard that this is not the first time that this has happened. So the whistleblower is saying that the White House tried to hide any record of this call and has potentially done this other times.

And the subtext is that they knew it would look really bad. The whistleblower also says that White House officials were talking soon afterward about how Trump appeared to have done something very inappropriate here. This is used, they say, for stuff such as covert action programs, like very secretive stuff that the United States is doing abroad, not just Trump says something to a foreign leader that he does not want to get out publicly. kind of use dubious national security pretexts to hide away this document and make sure that not too many people in the U.S. government could get to see it starts to look pretty shady, starts to look like part of a cover-up. What about this second bucket of all these other events that happened around the phone call, this sort of pressure campaign that the Trump administration placed on Ukraine. So the complaint spends several pages laying out a broader context for that now infamous

July 25th Trump phone call with Zelensky. It tells a pretty damning story based partly on public events and partly on what the whistleblower has been hearing privately from U.S. officials that since early this year, Giuliani has been saying publicly and also meeting Ukrainian officials behind the scenes to make clear that he really wants these investigations into the Bidens and into the origins of the FBI's Russian interference investigation. For instance, the whistleblower mentions that multiple U.S. officials told me that the Ukrainian leadership was led to believe that a meeting or phone call between the president and President Zelensky

would depend on whether Zelensky showed willingness to play ball on those investigative issues. Also, multiple U.S. officials, quote, were deeply concerned by what they viewed as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of national security decision-making process to engage with Ukrainian officials and relay messages back and forth between Kiev and the president. And then there's another claim that Trump instructed Vice President Mike Pence to cancel his planned trip to Ukraine to attend Zelensky's inauguration. They sent Energy Secretary Rick Perry instead, which was a bit of a trade down. all appears to be an effort to send a message to Zelensky that he's got to do what Trump wanted, which is what Rudy wanted, which is to pursue these investigations. The complaint here says that Trump pressured Zelensky. And yesterday in their joint press

conference at the UN, they both said there was no pressure. What are we to believe here? I think it's pretty clear that the whistleblower knows pretty well what he or she is talking about. And the reason for that is that in the complaint, there's an extensive description of what the whistleblower has heard about Trump's phone call with Zelensky on July 25th. That's the phone call that the White House just released their own internal documents summarizing what happened in the semi-transcript that we talked about yesterday. And it very closely matches what the whistleblower has laid out. The whistleblower makes clear that he or she wasn't in the room for the call. They don't appear to have seen the exact transcript of the call, but there's a very specific description of

what happened on the call, all of the key aspects of it, essentially, that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate the origins of the FBI's Russian interference investigation, and that Trump repeatedly told Zelensky to meet or speak with both his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General Bill Barr. None of this is even disputed at this point. It's all confirmed in the document that the White House itself released. So that really does seem to bolster the whistleblowers credibility. They may not have been in the room, but they were talking to people who know what they are talking about. We established yesterday that this transcript

that was released by the White House did not look good. How much worse is it made by the fact that it's so closely corroborated by this whistleblower's complaint? The whistleblower complaint confirms a lot of the stuff that already did not look good, and then it adds new stuff that does not look good, namely the White House effort to cover up the records of Trump's call with Zelensky and the various other potential events that were connected to this that the whistleblower lays out. Do we think the whistleblower will stay anonymous or will he or she eventually end up testifying before Congress like the DNI did today? According to the whistleblower's lawyers who are making public statements about the case,

the person does want to remain anonymous, but they also are willing to testify. So if testimony happens, obviously they will try to make sure that the person's identity is protected, whether technologically or whether just trusting members of Congress not to leak it, I guess. And if it does get leaked? That would probably be pretty unpleasant for the whistleblower because they would then end up being a named target of President Trump, criticized by Fox News. And we should note that the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has said that he is going to do whatever he can to try and protect the whistleblower from retaliation and their identity from being disclosed.

How has President Trump reacted to all this news that's broken? So Trump spoke to a crowd of staff from the U.S. mission to the United Nations, and from audio obtained by the L.A. Times, we know he said to them, I want to know who's the person that gave the whistleblower, who's the person that gave the whistleblower the information? Because that's supposed to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days where we were smart, right? The spies and treason.

We used to handle it a little differently than we do now. What is he trying to say there, Andrew? I think he's alluding to the fact that in the old days, spies and people who committed treason were executed. After the break, Andrew and I will go through the testimony of Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. This is Ukraine Explained. You know, the District of Columbia gets a bad rap.

Some people call it a swamp. I mean, it is kind of a swamp. Some people say everyone's just wearing khakis. I mean, everyone is kind of wearing khakis. Some people say you don't even have real federal representatives there. I mean, you don't have real federal representatives here. But you know what we do have in the District of Columbia is the Smithsonian Museums. And now there's a podcast called Lost at the Smithsonian hosted by The Daily Show's Asif Manvi. And in it, Asif digs into the little-known stories behind all the iconic artifacts in the National Museum of American History right here on the National Mall.

From Fonzie's leather jacket to Dorothy's ruby slippers, Asif and curators from the National Museum of American History and some special celebrity guests trace how these special objects have come to define our culture. The show again is called Lost at the Smithsonian, and it comes out today. Check it out wherever you check out your podcasts. Andrew, just minutes after the whistleblower's complaint was released, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire began his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. What did we know about him going into today? I am not partisan and I am not political. So Maguire is a pretty nonpartisan figure.

He had a lengthy military career in the Navy. I served under eight presidents while I was in uniform. I have taken the oath to the Constitution 11 times. The first time when I was sworn into the United States Navy in 1974 and Trump pushed out the people who were the number one and number two in the office of the director of national intelligence. He is now the acting director of national intelligence. And how long again has he been on the job? Six weeks. Six weeks. So why was he there today in front of Congress? So the whistleblower filed this complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. And his name? Michael Atkinson.

And he's a Trump appointee. Yes, Atkinson is a Trump appointee. He reviewed the complaint and concluded that this complaint was a matter of urgent concern and that it was credible. So he told McGuire, the acting director of national intelligence, about this finding. And then McGuire, according to the law, was supposed to transmit this whistleblower complaint to the congressional intelligence committees. But he didn't do that. And what ended up happening is that the inspector general went to the intelligence committees himself and told them about what was going on. So they wanted to hear

from McGuire today and they wanted to hear why didn't you give this whistleblower complaint over to us when we think by law you should have been obligated to do this weeks ago. The inspector general found that serious allegation of misconduct by the president credible. Did you also find that credible? I did not criticize the Inspector General's decision on whether or not it was credible. My question was whether or not it meets the urgent concern and the seven-day time frame that would follow once I was notified. My question, Director. I have no question in his judgment that he considers it a serious matter. Okay, so that's the central question here.

Why didn't the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph McGuire, immediately submit this whistleblower complaint to Congress? What was his answer? So he said that because this complaint involved conduct by the president of the United States. This was different. And to me, it just seemed prudent to be able to check and ensure as a member of the executive branch before I sent it forward. And it brought up some complicated legal issues that he wanted to make sure he was in the right on. So one of those was the question of executive privilege. And he says that he talked to the White House counsel about this.

It did appear that it has executive privilege. If it does have executive privilege, it is the White House that determines that. whether this whistleblower complaint actually was a matter of urgent concern. And his team consulted with the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel about that. And that office, OLC, reviewed the matter, and they decided that, in their view, it wasn't a matter of urgent concern that falls under this law. And the way the executive branch works, once the OLC makes a finding like that, the director of national intelligence would be bound by their finding. And he got how much pushback on that approximately? A lot from Democrats. You first went to the Office of Legal Counsel,

and then you went to White House Counsel? We went, excuse me, and then to the, repeat that please, sir. I'm just trying to understand the chronology. You first went to the Office of the Legal Council and then you went to the White House Council? No, no, no, sir. No, sir. No, we went to the White House first to determine, to ask the question. Okay, that's all I wanted to know is chronology. So you went to the White House first. So you went to the subject of the complaint for advice first about whether you should provide the complaint to Congress. McGuire kept describing the situation that he was in as. I believe that everything here in this matter is totally unprecedented. Because, you know, this is a complaint about the conduct of the president of the United States. And it's not about some ordinary government officials wrongdoing.

And that brings up a whole host of assorted legal issues. Watching this testimony felt like some sort of whiplash because Democrats were trying to probe into the process by which he did or did not submit this to Congress. And Republicans were just mostly attacking the hearing itself. What was their strategy? Because Maguire is not really a rock solid Trump guy who will go out of his way to politically defend the president, but he's not looking to politically attack the president either. committee and other Republicans kind of struggled with how to handle that. Nunes at one point almost warned Maguire that you should be careful about what you say because they're going to try to get you to say something that can be repeated by the media that is here that wants to report this story. They, meaning the Democrats, will try to use it against you. And the media. And the media, of course. I mean, here we are. I'm scrupulously nonpartisan here.

Same. But overall, it was not really a comfortable place for the GOP to be in. A few of them admitted that the allegations were, in fact, serious. Others, of course, tried to completely dismiss them and say it was all a big nothing. Despite that, there was something very interesting about seeing this intelligence officer with a storied career in the military who represents the Trump administration but isn't necessarily a political figure up there testifying before a number of political figures. Did anything interesting present itself in that unique situation? There was this one moment that was perhaps a bit off script for a Trump administration appointee where Maguire talked about the most important threats facing the United States at this point that he has to deal with in his job. I think that the greatest challenge that we face is not necessarily from a kinetic strike with Russia or China or Iran or North Korea.

I think the greatest challenge that we do have is to make sure that we maintain the integrity of our election system. Which really does seem to get to the heart of the whistleblower complaint itself and the challenge that the entire political system faces going forward in dealing with this topic of Trump trying to swing the 2020 election. Thank you.