OPINION — White House officials initially learned of the first Whistleblower’s complaint about President Trump’s July 25, telephone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky weeks before it became public. What did those officials do about it and was President Trump involved?
Answering that question should be part of the impeachment investigation now being conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).
In late July or early August, White House National Security Council officials were told that an anonymous Intelligence official had made a complaint about President Trump’s call to President Zelensky days before August 12, when the initial Whistleblower’s written complaint was delivered to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
It was days after the July 25 call that CIA General Counsel, Courtney Simmons Elwood, received an anonymous complaint concerning a call Mr. Trump had with a foreign leader, according to a September 26 story in The New York Times.
Elwood made her own preliminary inquiry to see if there was a “reasonable basis” for the complaint as required by government policy. She and a fellow lawyer found “that multiple people had raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s call,” the Times reported.
She then called John A. Eisenberg, a deputy White House counsel and National Security Council legal advisor. Eisenberg and his staff “began calling people in the National Security Council about their concerns about the call,” the Times reported. “They decided that the accusations had a reasonable basis,” according to the Times story.
In short, within days of the call, as the first Whistleblower would later write in his publicly-released complaint, “White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They told me that there was already a ‘discussion ongoing’ with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain.”
Given that inquiries by General Counsel Elwood and NSC Legal Advisor Eisenberg both found knowledgeable officials concerned about Trump’s call, they individually, on August 14, called John Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s national security division.
Apparently, neither Elwood nor Eisenberg knew at the time that the original Whistleblower had sought guidance from a staff member of the HPSCI and on August 12, had delivered an official complaint to ICIG Atkinson.
HPSCI investigators should determine from Elwood whether that August 14 call to Justice’s Demers was what she considered to be a “criminal referral” as required when involving an allegation of a law violation, information first reported by NBC News.
They should also find out from Demers what actions he subsequently took.
The Times has reported that on August 15, Demers went to the White House, reviewed the transcript of the call and alerted Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen and Brian A. Benczkowski, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division.
“Attorney General William Barr was made aware of the conversation with Elwood and Eisenberg, and their concerns about the president's behavior, in the days that followed,” according to NBC.
Elwood and Eisenberg in late August, believed the matter needed further investigation by the Justice Department. In early September, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, having done his own preliminary inquiry, also sent a letter to his boss, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. That letter was eventually forwarded to DOJ, saying that Atkinson believed that if the allegation was true, Trump may have violated federal election laws.
Atkinson also wrote that he believed Trump’s phone call could “potentially expose such a U.S. public official (or others acting in concert with the U.S. public official) to serious national security and counterintelligence risks with respect to foreign intelligence services aware of such alleged conduct.”
At that very time, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani was publicly reported as pressing Zelensky aides for dirt on former-Vice President Biden and his son Hunter – the subject of Trump’s still secret Zelensky phone call that by then, thanks to the Whistleblower, had raised concerns at CIA, the White House and Justice Department.
On September 5, the first leak occurred in a Washington Post editorial which said it had been “reliably told” that Trump was “attempting to force Mr. Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.”
Days later, after HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) disclosed the first Whistleblower’s complaint had not been delivered to Congress, it was only a matter of time before the complaint was released, followed by the White House memo describing the Trump/Zelensky conversation.
At this point, it is worth reviewing Trump’s clever handling of the matter, by which he has attempted to move the narrative from a highly-classified, secretly sought favor from Ukraine’s president to non-exceptional, public, legal, presidential requests made to leaders in China, Australia and perhaps others.
At first, Trump used the opportunity to switch attention to his own, second-hand, unproven allegations about the Bidens, while repeating steadily that Trump’s call itself was “perfect.”
He then echoed a Republican talking point that the Whistleblower was politically biased and had second-hand information that was inaccurate.
On October 3, speaking to reporters, Trump suddenly made an open request to the Chinese to investigate the Bidens, making that statement just after discussing upcoming trade talks and saying “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.” In the Zelensky call, Trump had sought the “favor” after mentioning U.S. support for Ukraine and Zelensky’s reference to the need for the American Javelin anti-tank weapon.
Trump then made a similar request to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but this time, he wanted Australian assistance for U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s investigation into the origins of the Mueller inquiry into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russians in 2016. That allowed Trump to claim publicly that Barr had asked him to make such requests to foreign leaders.
In summary, what two months ago some White House, National Security Council and CIA officials considered to be a secret - allegations of a presidential misuse of power warranting FBI investigation - has been turned by Trump into his publicly claimed presidential ‘duty’ to expose corruption abroad wherever it has occurred.
One other question is worth asking based on the Trump-Zelensky phone call and events that followed: How does the Trump-Barr, Justice Department decide when a criminal investigation is initiated?
CIA General Counsel Elwood’s criminal referral and ICIG Atkinson’s sought criminal investigation of Trump’s dealing with Ukraine President Zelensky were both turned down without further inquiry based solely on a decision that Trump’s phone call by itself did not appear to violate U.S. election laws.
However, a full-scale, worldwide, Justice Department-managed FBI investigation is underway into the origins of the 2017 appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to look into Russian activities in the 2016 presidential election based primarily on rumors, many of which long ago were proven untrue.
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