Page 4 - Intelligence Activity News Today

This has to do with ukraine, we know that in the final days of july, specifically on july 25th, that there was a phone call between the president of ukraine, zlinski and president trump. that complaint then filed on august 12th. now, this was of such urgent concern, the inspector general found, that he went to the director of national intelligence, the acting director, joseph maguire, who is in theory supposed to forward that then on to the congressional oversight committees. instead, he went to...

President has very wide authority and discretion when negotiating with foreign leaders. i dont think there is any doubt about that. >> jeff, do you agree with matt that it is not clear that a lot of people have been saying, the democrats have been saying well, look, the statute is clear. it says "shall." if the inspector general says its an urgent concern and applies to the intelligence activity, its got to go to congress whether the dni can make comments on it, but cant stop it. jeff, do you th...

Letter to the house intelligence committee. responding to the dni saying the complaint is not in our jurisdiction. he writes i never the less respectfully disagree with the determination. that the disclosure need not be transmitted to the committee. what hes saying, this does concern intelligence activity. he disagrees with the doj. and the dni. what you think about how this is handled? >> well a couple things, it doesnt matter that he disagrees -- that the acting dni thinks this is not urgent. ...

Intelligence activity, it goes to the core of what the dnis responsibilities are to the american people. thats pretty strong language. you and i are not yet privy to what the legal arguments back and forth. based on the reporting, we understand whats at issue here is conversations between the president of the united states and the president of ukraine with this shady business. whether it technically meets the requirement of the statute, im not sure. the legal answer is, we dont know how good the...

Legal analyst, former u.s. attorney, preet bharara to continue this conversation. preet, thanks so much for joining us. does the acting director of national intelligence need to turn this whistleblower complaint over donto congress? >> thats the controversy were trying to figure out. theres been something thats sort of an astonishing battle of letters and legal conclusions between the intelligence committees inspectori inand th acting dni. the deni has taken the position that this doesnt need to...

But it is true that the president has very wide authority and discretion when negotiating with foreign leaders. i dont think there is any doubt about that. >> jeff, do you agree with matt that it is not clear that a lot of people have been saying, the democrats have been saying well, look, the statute is clear. it says "shall." if the inspector general says its an urgent concern and applies to the intelligence activity, its got to go to congress whether the dni can make comments on it, but cant ...

You said, of urgent concern. and thats rare. as i understand it, there have been few, if any, of those in recent memory. what that means is it had to involve waste, fraud, or abuse connected to an intelligence activity. and thats whats important here, because, you know, obviously as john said, we dont know if this is ukraine, the reporting seems solid, nbc news has not confirmed its the july 25th ukraine call. but if it was and the allegation about that call is that donald trump made an inapprop...

Simple matter of you know a difference of opinion about policy matters. thats excluded by statute. this is something related to a serious flagrant violation of law concerning an operation of an intelligence activity. this whistle blower did everything right. they went through the process properly. ive heard people, including some calling him a snitch. no, this person did it properly. real quick, brad. the fact that there is a disagreement at the least between the dni and the ig about this very...

Nature of his contacts with the russians. >> susan, you say that this latest development makes it completely impossible to believe that the dni reasonably concluded that it was not an urgent matter and that they would try to hide this from congress. tell me why you think that. >> yes. so the question here has always been why exactly the dni was refusing to forward this whistle-blowing complaint to the intelligence committees, which is required by law. its not optional. so the question was what t...

Something so disturbing in the communications between the president and a foreign leader that this member of the intelligence community who "the washington post" said was detailed to the national security council, that that person felt the need to file a whistleblower complaint. that complaint was of such urgent concern in the mind of the inspector general of the intelligence community that that person then took it directly to the congressional oversight committee. now the director of national i...