Referrals Hit Justice
Office of the Director of National Intelligence General Counsel sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Eric Ciaramella, the whistleblower tied to President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and for former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. Fox News Digital said it reviewed the referrals, which point to possible violations of federal criminal law linked to 2019 congressional briefings. In Washington, the paperwork always arrives with a grave face and a long memory. This time, the referrals turn the old impeachment file from a political fight into a possible legal one, or at least into another round of hard questions.
The Complaint Behind the Drama
The case goes back to the July 25, 2019 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The complaint accused Trump of pressing Zelensky for a quid pro quo tied to an investigation touching the Biden family. But the form was built around second-hand information, and Atkinson later defended changes that let such material move forward. That is bureaucratic magic in its purest form: when the rulebook gets in the way, rewrite the rulebook and keep going. Critics say the complaint should never have been accepted as filed, especially since it concerned the President.
Questions Over What Was Known
Gabbard also declassified a top secret document tied to the first impeachment that had been locked away in a SCIF for years, and the House Intelligence Committee voted to release transcripts from 2019 hearings with Atkinson. The original whistleblower form said he had not spoken to Congress before filing, but later it came out that he had met with Adam Schiff’s team. Schiff had also said publicly that his committee had not spoken directly with the whistleblower. In other words, the public was asked to trust a process that seems to have had a loose grip on its own timeline. That is not exactly a poster for confidence in the permanent bureaucracy.
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