Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has asked the Justice Department to investigate personnel whose complaints about President Trump’s communications with Ukraine launched Democrats’ first impeachment effort in 2019.
Ms. Gabbard’s office confirmed the criminal referral for “one or more former employees of the Intelligence Community.”
The office did not name the target or targets, but Ms. Gabbard earlier this week declassified information she said exposed bias and misdeeds by a CIA employee who served as the initial whistleblower, plus the intelligence community’s inspector general whose abbreviated probe was the backbone of Democrats’ impeachment.
Ms. Gabbard said the CIA whistleblower was an anti-Trump registered Democrat who initially failed to tell investigators about a communication with Congress — apparently Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee — before making the first complaint.
Ms. Gabbard also said then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson gave the whistleblower credibility and rushed a probe that faulted Mr. Trump, even though the Justice Department had said the matter didn’t rise to the level of urgency required for an immediate report to Congress.
Ms. Gabbard said Mr. Atkinson’s office interviewed only four people in his 2019 probe.
One was the whistleblower and another was the whistleblower’s friend — whom Ms. Gabbard said was a “close colleague” of anti-Trump former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and who authored a now-discredited 2017 intelligence community assessment wrongly suggesting Mr. Trump colluded with Russia. The other two interviews were “character references.”
Mr. Trump would go on to be impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate.
The basis of the case against him was a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Democrats contended that Mr. Trump demanded Ukraine investigate then-former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and that Mr. Trump withheld security assistance to Ukraine to try to prod the probe.
Mr. Zelenskyy said at the time he did not feel pressured.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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