'Once again, the nation's grinding democratic processes are falling short of providing Americans what they need to decide whether Donald Trump did something wrong,' writes the Editorial Board for usatodayopinion.
The Editorial BoardJust as the aftershocks of the special counsel's Russia investigation seemed to have settled,
Short of someone violating the law by leaking that whistleblower complaint, or the whistleblower risking retaliation by bravely going to Congress, there's no quick or certain process for the public to learn its contents. Still unclear is whether there's any connection between Trump's desire for dirt on the Bidens and $250 million in U.S. military aid for Ukraine, which has been engaged in a five-year civil war with pro-Russian separatists. The aid was inexplicably delayed, then released soon after Congress raised concerns about the whistleblower complaint.
The law requires that an urgent-concern whistleblower complaint"shall" be turned over to Congress. But the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, blocked this. His legal response, supplied by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, is that the alleged target of the complaint — presumably Trump himself — is not a member of the intelligence community, so the urgent-concern requirements for the whistleblower law are not applicable.
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