On your important oversight role thank you very much for. I think a director. Would you agree that the whistleblower complaint alleges serious wrongdoing by the president of the United States. The whistleblower complaint in involved that the allegation of that i did it is not for me the Intelligence Community decide how the president conducts his Foreign Policy for his interaction with leaders of other countries so im not asking you to opine on how the president conduct Foreign Policy im asking you whether as the statute requires this complaint involved serious wrongdoing in this case by the president of the United States an allegation of serious wrongdoing by the president of the United States is that not the subject of this complaint. Yes that is the subject of the allegation of the complaint and 2 things mr chair and let me ask you about that. The Inspector General found that serious allegation of misconduct by the president credible did you also find that credible i did not criticize the expected generals decision on whether it not was credible my question was whether it we had whether and not it meets the urgent concern and this 7 day timeframe that would follow but so i was notified my question why after and i have no no question in his judgment that he considers it a serious matter well issue that i dont and you would you would concur would you not director that this complaint alleging serious wrongdoing by the president was credible its not for me to judge the what my doe it is wrong it is for you to judge apparently and i agree its not for you to judge you shall provide it to congress but but indeed you did judge whether this complaint should be provided to congress and i think we can we at least agree that the Inspector General made a sound conclusion that this will submit a complaint was credible and it is correct that is that in the cover letter thats been provided to what the committee i believe thats also be public the decision and the recommendation by the Inspector General that in fact the allegation was credible can we also agree that it was urgent that if the president of United States was withholding military aid to an ally even as you receive the complaint and was doing so for in the fairest reason that is to exercise leverage for the president of ukraine to dig up manufactured dirt on his opponent can we agree that it was urgent while that aid was being withheld theres tooth there are 2 things im talking about the lay the common understanding of what urgent means because its back to general said this was urgent not in a statutory meeting this was urgent as everyone understands that term can we. Agree that it was urgent it was urgent and important but my job as the director of National Intelligence was to comply with the whistleblower protection act and that could hear to the definition of urgent concern which is a legal term and to adhere to the meaning of the term shall yes or in this case you sought a 2nd opinion or whether she really means shell by going to the white house no sir there were 2 things as i said in my statement one it appeared that it also had batters of executive privilege i am not authorized as the director of National Intelligence to waive executive privilege and in any time at any time over the last month that you held this complaint did the white house assert executive privilege mr chairman i have endeavored i think thats a yes or no question did they ever assert executive privilege they were working through the executive privilege procedures in deciding whether or not to accept executive privilege and so they they never accepted executive privilege as at the answer the if mr chairman if they did we would not have released the letters yesterday and all the information that had been forthcoming. Now the 1st place you went was to the white house is my to understand that from your Opening Statement it wasnt to the pardon justice 1st place you went for a 2nd opinion was to the white house i did not go for a 2nd opinion the question was is the information contained here subject to executive privilege not whether and not it made urgent concern and and so the 1st place you went for advice as to whether you should provide the complaint as the statute requires the congress was the white house. I am not authorized as the director of National Intelligence to provide executive privilege information i think it is prudent as a member of the executive branch to check to ensure that in fact it does not im just asking about the sequencing here did you 1st go to the white house if it was herman whether you should provided a complaint to congress no sir that was not the question the question was whether or not it has executive privilege not whether or not i should send it on to congress. Is the 1st party you went to outside of your office to seek advice a counsel direction the white house i have consulted with the white House Counsel and eventually we also consulted with the department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel and my question is did you go to the white house 1st i went to the office of Legal Counsel for advice yes sir that well im asking which went to 1st did you go to the department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel 1st or did you go to the white house 1st i went to the office white excuse me my team my office went to the office of Legal Counsel 1st to or to to receive whether or not the matter in the letter and the complaint might meet the executive privilege they viewed it and said we determine that it appears to be executive privilege and until executive privilege is determined and cleared i did not have the authority to be able to send that forward to the committee i worked with the office of Legal Counsel for the past several weeks to get resolution on this its a very deliberate process or direct im just im still trying to the chronology so you 1st went to the office of Legal Counsel and then you went to white House Counsel we went to the beach and then to the. Police or im just trying to send a chronology you 1st went to the office of Legal Counsel and then you went to the white House Counsel. No no no sir no sir no we went to the we went to the white house 1st to determine to ask ok thats all i want to know is printed she went to the white house 1st so you went to the subject of the complaint for advice 1st about whether you should provide the complaint to congress there were issues within this couple of things one it did appear that it has executive privilege if it does have executive privilege it is the white house that determines that i cannot determine that as the director of National Intelligence but in this case the the white house the president is the subject of the complaint he is the subject of the wrongdoing were you aware when you went to the white house for advice about whether evidence of wrongdoing by the white house should be provided to the congress were you aware that the white House Counsel has taken the un press that position that the privilege applies to communications involving the president. When he was president involving the president when he wasnt president involving people who never served in the measured ration involving people who never served in the midst ration even when theyre not even talking to the president were you aware that that is the the un president position of the white house the white house you went to for advice about whether you should turn over a complaint involving the white house mr chairman as a set of my Opening Statement i believe that everything here and this matter is totally unprecedented and that is why my former directors of National Intelligence forwarded them to you whether or not and met urgent concerns or whether it was serious this was different and to me it just seemed prudent to be able to check and ensure as a member of the executive branch before i sent it forward id have a couple of questions on turn over the Ranking Member and he may consume as much time as i did. The 2nd place you went to was the justice department. And. He went to that department headed by a man bill barr who was also implicated in the complaint and you knew that when you went to the department of justice for an opinion correct that bill barr was mentioned in the complaint mr chairman i went to the office of Legal Counsel in consultation with the i. C. I. G. A. He was a part of that to receive whether or not this met the criteria yes but that i. C. I. G. Vehemently disagreed with the opinion of the bill Barr Justice Department did he not he still met considered it a matter of urged concern however as you know opinions from the department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel are binding on all of us in the executive branch well let me ask you this do you think its appropriate that you go to a department run by someone who is the subject of the complaint to get advice or who is a subject of the complaint or implicate in the complaint for advice as to whether you should provide that complaint to congress did did did that conflict of interest concern you mr chairman. When i saw this report and complaint immediately i knew that this was a serious matter it came to may and i just thought it would be prudent what kind of sure im just asking if the conflict of interest concern do that well sir i have to work with what i have got and that is the office of Legal Counsel within the executive branch but we had no way that you also had was a statute that says shall and even then you said you had the discretion to provide it but but did not. Because it did not meet the matter of urgent concern that took away this 7 day timeline i have endeavored to work with the office of Legal Counsel in order to get the material to you which we you have to try provided to you yesterday now i have to tell you chairman it is not perhaps at the timeline that i would have desired or you but the office of Legal Counsel has to make sure they make prudent decisions and yesterday when the president released the transcripts of his call with the president of ukraine then they could no longer do it no executive privilege no longer applied and that is when i was free to be able to send the complaint to the Committee Director you know believe the whistleblower is a political hack to you i dont know who the whistle blow is mr chairman to be honest with you ive done my utmost to make sure that i protect this anonymity. That doesnt sound like much of a defense of the whistleblower here so when you founded everything right you dont believe the whistleblower is a political hack do you director i believe that that as i said before mr chairman i believe the whistle blow on it is operating and good faith well then that has money in the law they couldnt be in good faith if they were acting as a political hack could they mr chairman my job is to support and lead the entire Intelligence Community that individual works for me therefore it is my job to make sure that i support and defend that person you dont have any reason to cues them of disloyalty to our country or suggest theyre beholden to some other country i mean im sure absolutely not i believe that the whistleblower followed the steps every step of the way however the statute was one in this situation involving the president of the United States who is not in the Intelligence Community or matters underneath my supervision did not meet the criteria for urgent consumer im just asking about the whistleblower right now i think the whistleblower did the right thing i think he followed the law every step of the way and we just got started with it and why director when the president called the whistleblower a political hack and suggested that he or she might be disloyal to the country why did you remain silent i did not remain silent mr chairman i issued a statement to my workforce telling they could meeting my commitment to the whistleblower protection and ensuring that i would provide protection to anybody within the Intelligence Community who comes forward but the way this thing was blowing out i didnt think it was appropriate for made to make a press statement so that we counter in each other every day i think it was not only appropriate but theres nothing that would have given more confidence to the workforce than the hearing you publicly say no one should be calling this professional who did the right thing. A hack or a traitor or anything else. I think that would have meant a great deal of the work force mr nunez youre recognized. Welcome mr director its a pleasure to to have you here and youre going to be part of a charade of legal war games theyre going to try to get you to Say Something that can be repeated by the media that is here that wants to report this story you i just want to get one thing straight because one of the quotes are going to use from you is you saying that this was a credible complaint that will be used in spun as youre saying that it was true and i want to give you an opportunity to you do not you have not investigated the veracity or the truthfulness of this complaint thats correct Ranking Member the determination on credible was made by the i. C. Inspector general he made the determination that it is credible and he also made the determination of urge you could crn why question was not i did not question his judgment there the question i had was to does in fact this allegation of wrongdoing made the criteria the statutory criteria of urgent concern and the other issue as i said complicated things did it in fact the allegations within this whistleblower complaint involve executive privilege thank you for clarifying that. Have you ever you mentioned it a little bit in your testimony but have you ever are you aware of any former d. N. I. As who have testified and about whistleblower complaints in the public. Not to my knowledge or Ranking Member id i do not know are you aware of any cases like this that were put into the spotlight as it is would this be the way to handle it out in the public like this. I am not aware of any but i want to say once again i believe that the situation we have in why were here this morning is because this case is unique and unprecedented so why are cases normally not handled out in the public. All the other cases that came before me that this committee of the Senate Committee whether and not they met the criteria of urgent concern were forwarded because they involved members of the Intelligence Community who were in fact in organizations underneath the d. N. I. Authority and responsibility this one just did not come that way because it involved a member an individual who is not a member of the Intelligence Community or an organization underneath the authority of the d. N. I. So this one is different from all of this in the past that i am aware of so i want to get into how this all. Got out in the public over the last this is basically been orchestrated effort over over 2 weeks. If you we were 1st told about it. On a week and a half ago and we were told very specifically that the whistleblower did not want to get any of this information out they didnt want it to leak out so there were only a few potential groups of people that would have known about this complaint you and your people within your office yes or the people within the Inspector Generals office and the whistleblower and whoever that whistleblower. I gave this information to. So what im trying to ascertain is how would it run at all the Mainstream Media outlets how did they get even though they got a lot of it wrong but they had the basics of it that it involved the president of United States talking to a foreign leader so did anybody you or anybody in your office leaked this to the Washington Post or embassy news Ranking Member of the Intelligence Community we know how to keep a secret. As far as how that got into the press i really do not know sir i just know that its all over the place and as you said its been reported by different media for the past several weeks where they get their information from i dont know so that is you know it was not it was not from the Intelligence Community from me or from my office thank you. Director. So this is not the 1st time this has happened to this president that happened with a call between the mexican president the australian Prime Minister so its happened twice before the pieces of transcripts leaked out and of course this time it was leaked out again and the president thankfully he was able to put this out because of the because of the actions. Of this of the situation as you said is that unprecedented. Is it normal for the president either states to have their conversations leak out miss a 3rd time. I would have to leave that to the white house to to respond to that their record member but to me was president of the United States conversation with any other head of state i would consider a privilege conversation but clearly the i mean those conversations are being captured by the intelligence agencies. So not necessarily share i mean if if the president of the law should say this theyre captured and then disseminated when that shouldnt disseminated to the intelligence agencies. I have to be careful in this open hearing about you know how i respond to that the Intelligence Community and the National Security agency obviously you know they collect things that are to protect i just want to make sure because im just i mean were just going to foreign leaders when i was us have either the president say its not talk to foreign leaders or we should just or public just publish all the transcripts because thats whats happening here. Ranking members to and somebody is leaking this and its likely coming from from the agencies that you oversee recognize know that sir im not saying that you dont know but we had the transcript of the mexican president the australian Prime Minister and now contents of a call with the ukrainian president leak up Ranking Member of the allegation in the whistleblower complaint was that there were about 12 people who listened in on the conversation members of the National Security council and others and then others were briefed from state department as well as the transcripts because they have our area of responsibility and a region responsibility that they would be informed on the interaction so there were a number of people that from the white house briefed on the call this would not be something that well im quite im quite sure this white house probably didnt leak this out i wouldnt say the white house but there are individuals within the white house that may or may not i dont know but it would not be from an intelligence intercept i will say that. Im not im just saying the dissemination the dissemination of these calls is supposed to be sacred right i mean its and it is important for the state department and the appropriate agencies to get im not saying its all in the Intelligence Agency but when a president talks to a foreign leader its its confidential contents are confidential there could be some facts of that conversation that you do want to get to the appropriate agency not just that not just the i. C. I want to be clear about that but but this is now the 3rd time im not aware of this ever happening before of the contents of calls like this getting now. I really dont know Ranking Member im not aware i dont have the numbers to take its just seems to me though that it is unprecedented and i would also say i think that its decision by the president yesterday to release the transcripts of his conversation with the best of the ukraine is probably unprecedented as well. Oh appreciate you being here and have fun. Be careful what you say because theyre going to use these words against you oh well ill tell you one Ranking Member either way im honored to be here and im honored to be leading being on it and i appreciate your service to this country for a long time and im sure well be talking again soon hopefully not in the public hopefully behind closed doors like this is supposed to be done thank you very much for yield back mr arms thank you sherman director mcguire thank you for being here and thank you for your profound service in the service of your family to this country director what i find be will during about this whole conversation is that we are not sitting here today and the American Public is not aware of the allegations of the president asking for a favor of investigation into his political opponent were not aware of the murky decision to withhold aid were not aware of mr giulianis apparent establishment of a personal state department we are not aware of a possible real retaliate against a u. S. Ambassador none of this happens but for the decision of your Inspector GeneralMichael Atkinson a man who was appointed by President Trump and confirmed by a Republican Senate to come to this committee 7 days after the complaint was required by law to be transmitted to us it was his decision personal decision not the kaleidoscope of fantabulous to conspiracy theories the Ranking Member thinks is happening here but it was the decision of Michael Atkinson an appointee of this president to come to this Committee Following not advice from you or any law but following his own conscience without his decision to do this none of this is happening correct. I applaud michael i applaud michaels the way he has done this he has acted in good faith he has followed the law every step of the way the question is congressman does it get it or did it not meet the Legal Definition no no so i asked a very different question which was without his decision it its its a simple question without his decision none of this is happening is that correct well weve got a back up to the whistleblower as well so ok and i should have noted that the whistleblower also deserves the same accolades that mr atkinson does director were you ever advised by the white house not to provide this complaint to congress for any reason no congressman ok and as i understand it the opinion was that you were not obligated to convey despite the very clear wording of the law to convey the complaint to congress so the decision was taken to defy as sabena of this congress the subpoena of severus september 17th to turn over the complaint who made the decision to defy that subpoena of september 17th congressman urgent concerns or im asking a very simple question who made the decision to defy the congressional subpoena somebody said we will not abide by this subpoena and id like to know who that somebody was congressman nobody did i endeavored once we no longer had urge you could search with the 7 day timeline you know to work to get the information to the committee what i needed to do was to get work through the executive privilege hurdles with the office of Legal Counsel at the white house though this was the most important issue to me you know the white house has got quite a few other issues that they were dealt with you know i would have liked to have had i said to the chairman that perhaps this moved a little faster than it did but this is a very deliberate process and finally you know that came to a head yesterday so with you know when. I received the information on the 26th of august we had 7 days based on that the whistleblower protection at all we did was lose those 7 days it may have taken longer than we would have liked or you would have liked but you have the information so it was there just so im focused on the subpoena yes or the subpoenas on your desk to subpoena the congress the United States is pretty clear in what it asked for youre saying that a decision was never taken not to comply with that subpoena and yet somehow it wasnt complied with im im im again im looking for the Decision Making process to ignore illegal congressional subconscious but i did not ignore i dealt with the chairman of this committee and asked to have one more week to be able to do what i needed to do to get this information released he was gracious enough in this committee was also safari supportive it wasnt something that it was ready to go but i was committed fully committed to this committee and to the chairman to get that information and i finally was able to provide that yesterday ok thank you Director Director did you or your office ever speak to the president United States about this complaint. Congressman im im the president s Intelligence Officer is speak with him several times throughout the week so let me repeat my question did you ever speak to the president about this complaint my conversations with the president because im the director of National Intelligence are privileged and it would be inappropriate for me because it would destroy my relationship with the president in Intelligence Matters to divulge any of my conversations with the president of the United States but just so we can be clear for the record you are not denying that you spoke to the president about this complaint what im saying congressman is that i will not disclose privileged conversations that i have as the director of National Intelligence with the president has the white house instructed you to assert that privilege no sir i just its just a member of the executive committee i mean executive branch as a member of the National Security council and also met the Homeland Committee and events you know i have just have to maintain the discretion and protect the conversation with the president the United States that thank you director i appreciate that answer apparently the clock is broken but i will yield back the balance of my time thank you congressman mr conaway and u. S. Chairman