House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said President Trump’s acting spy chief cited a “higher authority” in refusing to adhere to the Democratic leader’s demand for access to a whistleblower’s complaint.
Although Schiff could not pinpoint who exactly is telling acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to hold out, Schiff said it could go all the way up to Trump.
“This involved a higher authority, someone above the DNI,” the California Democrat said Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation.
“I can’t go into the contents, but I can tell you that at least according to the director of national intelligence, this involves an issue of privileged communications,” he added. “Now that means it’s a pretty narrow group of people that it could apply to that are both above the DNI in authority and also involve privileged communications. So, I think it’s fair to assume this involves either the president or people around him or both.”
On Friday, Schiff issued a subpoena to Maguire to compel him to hand over the complaint, which originated from within the intelligence community.
Statute, Schiff says, mandates that Maguire hand over the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees. A letter to Maguire, accompanying the subpoena, said the House Intelligence Committee will require him to testify in an open hearing on Thursday if he does not comply by Tuesday.
Asked by moderator Margaret Brennan if Maguire is so far ignoring the subpoena, Schiff said, “Well, at this point, yes.”
“Ignoring the subpoena, ignoring our request. No DNI — no director of national intelligence has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint,” Schiff said. “And here, Margaret, the significance is the inspector general found this complaint to be urgent, found it to be credible, that is they did some preliminary investigation, found the whistleblower to be credible, that suggests corroboration. And that it involved serious or flagrant wrongdoing.”
Schiff also warned of the repercussions of the acting director of national intelligence ignoring whistleblower protections.
“It means that people are going to end up taking the law into their own hands and going directly to the press instead of the mechanism that Congress set to protect classified information,” he said. “And that gravely threatens both our national security as well as a system that encourages people to expose wrongdoing.”
Schiff said his panel is investigating possible “wrongdoing.” He also noted that although the whistleblower is “not allowed to provide the complaint to us,” this individual “can come directly to Congress, which the director is also prohibiting at this point.”
