It's a familiar response when controversy seems to imperil Trump’s presidency.
President Donald Trump sits at the center of another brewing scandal — this one over his communications with Ukraine’s new president — and his allies are already working to debunk, deflect, deny and ignore.
To the president’s defenders, it’s just another case of media bias and an angry anti-Trump cabal inside the government lashing out — what’s the whistleblower’s agenda? And so what if the president pressured foreign leaders to root out potential corruption? One of the biggest frustrations so far stems from the inability to know precisely what’s happened, even as new details are dribbling out in the media.
Trump on Friday did not deny that he discussed Biden with a foreign leader and told reporters the allegations against him were lodged by a “partisan” intelligence official, despite acknowledging that he did not know the official’s identity. In fact, news coverage on the issue has increased in recent months — not all of it positive for Biden, who is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
Biden on Friday blasted the “clear-cut corruption” at play and called on Trump to immediately release the transcript of the call in question and allow the whistleblower notification to be sent to Congress. But national security lawyers and whistleblower experts say that’s not possible. Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, made a determination that the complaint constitutes an “urgent concern” that falls squarely within his purview.
Still, McCullough acknowledged, the inspector general is now “between a rock and a hard place.” If he went straight to Congress with the substance of the complaint, he could be fired. “But he still needs to retain his independence,” McCullough said. “It’s a completely unprecedented situation.” And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for his part appeared unaware that the Trump administration was withholding the complaint from the congressional intelligence committees.
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