The FBI sought an interview with the CIA analyst whose whistleblower complaint kicked off impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
An agent from the FBI’s Washington field office called one of the whistleblower’s attorneys in October, but an interview has not yet been scheduled, according to multiple reports.
It is unclear what the bureau hopes to ask the whistleblower. An FBI representative declined to comment. The whistleblower’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.
The complaint from a CIA analyst, whose identity has not yet been confirmed, was filed in August, raising concerns about Trump improperly pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals. Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson deemed the complaint to be urgent and credible, and it spurred the House Democrats’ impeachment effort examining whether the president abused his office.
The Justice Department received a criminal referral about a potential campaign finance violation in relation to Trump’s July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a central tenet of the whistleblower complaint, but declined to take action after conducting a review by the Criminal Division.
But FBI counterintelligence officials remained uneasy about the complaint’s assertion that Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and two of his recently indicted associates may have been manipulated by Russian interests, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official.
“There were guys within the [intelligence community] who believe this is another Russian attempt,” the former official told Yahoo News. “People think Giuliani is being led down the primrose path.”
The CIA analyst wrote about being “concerned that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government’s efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in U.S. elections” in the complaint filed on Aug. 12.
The whistleblower’s legal team has offered to have their client respond to written questions in the House impeachment effort, but will not allow an in-person interview as demanded by Republicans.
“Identifying any suspected name for the whistleblower will place their family at risk of serious harm,” said Andrew Bakaj and Mark Zaid, lawyers for the whistleblower.
Ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia were the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation that was later wrapped into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference, which ended earlier this year. Mueller stated his team could not establish that Trump committed a crime, but also said the president was not exonerated.
During his July 24 testimony, one day before Trump’s call with Zelensky, Mueller hinted at the existence of an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigations stemming from his investigation.
Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, became Trump’s personal attorney in April 2018 to contend with the Mueller investigation. Witnesses in the impeachment effort have accused him of running a shadow foreign policy with Ukraine outside of normal channels.
Giuliani has said his outreach in Ukraine, seeking answers about corruption allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter and a conspiracy theory regarding CrowdStrike, stemmed from his effort to defend his client during the special counsel inquiry.
