US House Intelligence Committee head, Representative Adam Schiff, subpoenaed the acting director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, over a whistleblower complaint Maguire supposedly hid from Congress.
In his letter, Schiff said that he learned on Monday of a “credible” and “urgent” complaint filed the previous month and that he had asked for an unredacted copy of the document the next day, according to a statement published on the committee’s website.
“More than ten days since the Director was obligated to transmit the complaint to the intelligence committees, the Committee has still not received the disclosure from the Director, in violation of the law,” Schiff wrote in a letter to Maguire.
In his letter, Schiff contemplated that Maguire’s decision to keep the complaint undisclosed may indicate that the paper involves someone high in the administration of President Donald Trump or even Trump himself.
“This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible ‘serious or flagrant’ misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law,” Schiff wrote.
According to Schiff’s letter, the committee knows that the complaint involves “possibly privileged communications” by people outside the intelligence community, and that Maguire never ruled out that the document regards matters currently under investigation by the Intelligence Committee, according to The Hill.
“The Committee – and the American people – must know why, in violation of the law, a whistleblower complaint is being concealed, whether the underlying conduct involves the President or those around him, and whether the White House is involved in trying to cover up this authorized disclosure,” Schiff wrote.
Maguire is supposed to appear for a public hearing in front of the panel on 19 September to explain his alleged decision to withhold the complaint.
