Free Republic

The CIA officer whose whistleblower complaint is at the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump consulted with the House Intelligence Committee before filing it, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The whistleblower initially had a colleague convey his concerns that Trump asked Ukraine's leader to intervene in the 2020 presidential election to the CIA's top lawyer before going to Congress, current and former officials told the Times. The whistleblower then reportedly changed course and spoke to an Intelligence Committee staff member who suggested that the person hire a lawyer and file a complaint. The staffer shared part of...

The emerging Ukraine narrative is eerily similar to the Russian collusion hoax. Dismissing questions about its origins isnÂ’t going to cut it. For two years, our political and media elites assured us that a wide-ranging independent counsel investigation of RussiaÂ’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election would reveal that the Trump campaign, and indeed Trump himself, colluded with Moscow to steal the election. The Robert Mueller probe, we were told, would prove it.Not only did that turn out to be false, but as the investigation dragged on it became clear that the origins of the probe were highly suspicious,...

The inspector general for the intelligence community said late Monday that the whistleblower whose complaint touched off an impeachment inquiry claimed to have firsthand knowledge of misconduct -- a claim that appears to conflict with documents sent to Congress and the director of national intelligence. The lengthy statement Monday was posted in response to questions, raised in the media and by congressional Republicans, about the disclosure form filed by the whistleblower, who first flagged concerns about President Trump's July phone call in which he asked the leader of Ukraine to "look into" actions by former Vice President Joe Biden and...

Sen. Doug Jones (D., Ala.) said much of the Ukraine whistleblower complaint depended on "hearsay" and that Congress cannot impeach officials based on hearsay during a Sunday interview on MSNBC's Kasie DC. Jones broke with House Democrats when he criticized the whistleblower allegation that launched the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The first-term senator said he was skeptical of using secondhand complaints as the basis for removing a sitting president from office, echoing the sentiments of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). "A lot of that allegation, a lot of the whistleblower complaint is in fact hearsay. It is what...

Actual report: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is demanding the Trump administration release a whistleblower report that is said to involve President Trump's discussions with a world leader, saying the complaint should be made available to lawmakers immediately. "If media reports are correct that President Trump delayed military aid appropriated by Congress in order to get Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, it’s difficult not to see that as an abuse of presidential authority, plain and simple," Feinstein said in a statement that was released Saturday. Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr...