Two top House Democrats called on the Justice Department’s watchdog to investigate whether comments made by Attorney General William Barr defending President Trump’s firing of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson broke DOJ rules.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler sent a letter on Monday to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, as well as to Acting Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility Jeffrey Ragsdale, asking for an inquiry into whether an interview Barr gave earlier this month “violated applicable DOJ policies and rules of professional conduct.”
“In a televised interview on April 9, 2020, Mr. Barr blatantly mischaracterized Mr. Atkinson’s conduct and DOJ’s own actions relating to the complaint filed last summer by an Intelligence Community whistleblower,” Schiff and Nadler said, adding: “Mr. Barr’s misleading remarks appear to have been aimed at justifying the President’s retaliatory decision to fire Mr. Atkinson.”
The letter earned swift pushback from the Justice Department.
A senior DOJ official insisted to the Washington Examiner that Barr’s remarks “were entirely accurate” and said, “The entire dispute between the IG and the Acting DNI was the IG’s demand that the complaint be sent to Congress before the executive branch entity with jurisdiction — the Criminal Division of DOJ — could review it.”
The official said this “seven-day period gave the DNI the time to review whether the allegations presented an urgent concern, but it was not intended, and hardly provided, time to review the merits.” The official added that this showed Barr “correctly described the IG as insisting that the complaint immediately go to Congress.”
Last year, Atkinson determined a whistleblower complaint from a CIA analyst about a phone call Trump had with Ukraine’s president related to a conspiracy theory about CrowdStrike and an effort to have Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden to be “urgent” and “credible.” He forwarded the complaint to then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who did not give Atkinson permission to share it with Congress after seeking guidance from the White House and Justice Department, but did allow him to notify lawmakers of its existence.
The whistleblower complaint was eventually handed over to Congress, and Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader was also made public.
The Democrats were reacting to comments the attorney general made during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham a few days after Trump notified Congress in early April he was removing Atkinson from the inspector general role, effective in 30 days because he “no longer” had full confidence in him.
“I think the president did the right thing in removing Atkinson. From the vantage point of the Department of Justice, he had interpreted his statute, which is a fairly narrow statute, that gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people, and tried to turn it in to a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately reported to Congress without letting the Executive Branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem,” Barr said. “He was told this in a letter from the Department of Justice, and he is obliged to follow the interpretation of the Department of Justice, and he ignored it. So, I think the president was correct in firing him.”
Schiff and Nadler said Monday that Atkinson “neither ‘ignored’ DOJ guidance, nor acted contrary to his legal and professional obligations in handling the whistleblower complaint,” and “to the contrary,” he “faithfully discharged his legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General in accordance with federal law.”
The two Democrats said Trump fired Atkinson “simply for doing his job and following the law.”
“in maligning” Atkinson and “falsely portraying him as insubordinate,” they said, Barr “misrepresented DOJ’s legal opinion concerning the whistleblower complaint.”
But the senior DOJ official told the Washington Examiner that Atkinson “effectively ignored OLC’s opinion by notifying the intelligence committees that he personally disagreed with the DNI’s conclusion — in reliance on OLC — that the allegations against the President did not meet the statutory definition of an urgent concern.”
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel reviewed the whistleblower complaint in the fall and concluded that it was not an “urgent concern” under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 because it was not related to “the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity” under the authority of the director of national intelligence.
Atkinson disagreed, as did dozens of other inspectors general at the time, including Horowitz, who signed a letter to the Justice Department supporting his determination.
“We agree with the ICIG that the OLC opinion creates a chilling effect on effective oversight and is wrong as a matter of law and policy,” they wrote. “We also share the ICIG’s concern that the OLC opinion could seriously impair whistleblowing and deter individuals in the intelligence community and throughout the government from reporting government waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct.”
During a White House press briefing in early April, Trump harshly criticized Atkinson after firing him.
“I thought he did a terrible job — absolutely terrible. He took a whistleblower report, which turned out to be a fake report. It was fake. It was totally wrong,” Trump said, adding: “Not a big Trump fan, that I can tell you.”
The president was impeached by the House in December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was acquitted on both articles of impeachment by the Senate following a trial in February.
“That man is a disgrace to IGs,” Trump said of Atkinson this month. “He’s a total disgrace.”
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is leading a bipartisan group of senators in requesting more answers from Trump about the reasoning behind his firing of Atkinson.
