House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff accused the president of firing out of retribution the inspector general who passed along the Ukrainian whistleblower complaint to Congress.
President Trump informed lawmakers he was firing Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson on Friday night, citing a lack of confidence in Atkinson.
During an appearance later that night on MSNBC’s The Last Word, Schiff accused Trump of “settling scores” with the firing.
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and what is this president doing as thousands of people are dying? He is retaliating against people that are on his enemies list and doing it in the dead of night. This is just another showing of the character or lack of character of this president,” he began.
The California Democrat then pivoted to discuss the implications he sees in the president’s recent decisions regarding the Intelligence Community.
“But it is a real threat to the independence of the Intelligence Community, which lost the head of the community, the DNI, the acting DNI and his deputy, the acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center was also fired,” Schiff continued. “Along with his deputy also left the office. So he’s decapitating the leadership of the intelligence community in the middle of a national crisis.”
He also praised Atkinson’s work before explicitly accusing the president of getting rid of Atkinson as a result of the whistleblower complaint, which was handed over to Congress.
The whistleblower, allegedly career CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, filed a complaint to Atkinson’s office on Aug. 12 related to a July phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the conversation, the president sought to convince Zelensky to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and a Ukrainian company the younger Biden worked for that faced previous accusations of corruption.
Atkinson determined the complaint to be “urgent” and “credible,” which he then passed along to then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. After seeking guidance from the White House and Justice Department, Maguire gave Atkinson permission to share it with Congress, but did allow him to notify them of its existence.
The whistleblower’s complaint started a chain of events that ultimately resulted in the president’s impeachment.
