The CIA’s top lawyer made what she considered to be a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the allegations contained in a whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s conversation with Ukraine.
CIA general counsel Courtney Simmons Elwood, a Trump appointee, had a phone call with a top national security lawyer at the White House and the chief of the Justice Department’s National Security Division on Aug. 14.
Both Elwood and John Eisenberg, the White House national security lawyer, told John Demers of the Justice Department that the whistleblower’s allegations warranted examination by the department, NBC News reported Friday.
Elwood reportedly considered the call to a be a criminal referral, but Justice Department officials weren’t sure whether it was and followed up with her a week later to seek clarification. NBC said Elwood “remained vague” in the follow-up.
She first learned of the whistleblower’s concerns about the president through a colleague who informed her of the matter. At the time of the phone call with the Justice Department, no one on the call had seen the whistleblower’s complaint, which had been submitted two days before.
Attorney General William Barr was told of the conversation with Elwood and Eisenberg and about their concerns regarding the president in the following days.
Justice Department officials said they didn’t consider the phone call a formal criminal referral because it wasn’t written.
The phone call was separate from a letter from the Intelligence Community inspector general regarding the whistleblower complaint that alleged Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election by urging Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.
The Justice Department later declined to open a criminal investigation into Trump’s conduct. The department said the decision was based on an analysis of whether Trump violated campaign finance law because that was the only statute mentioned in the whistleblower’s complaint.
The issue of campaign finance law did not come up in the phone call involving Elwood, Eisenberg, and the Justice Department, officials said.
